Explore Isle’s Minority Led U.S Utilities Trial Reservoir in our “Success Stories” blog series.
Reshmina William, PhD (Project Manager, Isle Americas)
Isle’s Minority-Led U.S. Utilities Trial Reservoir
Flint, Michigan has become a symbol of the United States’ drinking water infrastructure challenges.
In 2014, city officials made the cost-saving decision to switch from purchasing water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage District to sourcing it from the Flint River. Without appropriate corrosion control measures, the new water source leached lead, a potent neurotoxin, from the city’s aging service lines into drinking water supplies. Tens of thousands of people – including children – were exposed to lead in concentrations sometimes exceeding one hundred times the actionable level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).
Over a decade later, Flint’s residents are still living with the consequences. Many long-term mental and physical health challenges have been linked to the disaster, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, learning disabilities, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The loss of trust in the water systems is so deep that many Flint residents still solely use bottled water for basic household needs.
While Flint is a microcosm for the challenges facing disadvantaged communities across the United States, it is by no means unique. The USEPA estimates that there are nearly 9.2 million lead service lines buried in cities across the country, many in low-income communities concentrated in the Rust Belt, Florida, and Texas.
Image by USEPA
The problem extends beyond just lead. Nearly 25% of the U.S. population is served by drinking water systems in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act: the federal law that is supposed to guarantee equitable access to clean drinking water for all Americans. Many of these violations are in communities that are economically or socially vulnerable. Because of the history of residential segregation in the U.S., populations of color more likely to live with aging, underdeveloped, and under-funded water infrastructure that is susceptible to health violations.
At the same time, people of color remain under-represented within the utilities that serve their communities. Hispanic and black workers tend to be significantly under-represented in higher level, better paying utility positions, such as engineering or management. As of 2016, black, Hispanic, and Asian workers combined comprised only 15% of water utility chief executives. Without a seat at the table, minority communities struggle to make their needs heard.
A Trial Reservoir for Minority-Led Utilities
The Minority-Led U.S. Utilities (MLUU) Reservatório de teste was born out of a desire to address both of these related challenges. As part of Isle’s utility CEO Forum, a group of CEOs are advocating for a program to level the playing field for innovative risk-taking among utility leadership. Cathy Bailey of Greater Cincinnati Water Works (GCCW) is leading the charge.
As the Executive Director for GCCW, the oldest water utility in the state of Ohio, Cathy has a long legacy to live up to. Over the course of her three decades working at GCCW, she’s often felt the pressure of being a person of color in a leadership role, particularly now as the first African American female director in GCCW’s history.
“The water industry is still very white male-dominated,” she says. “It brings a lot of challenges in how [minorities] are treated, how we’re seen, and the expectations people sometimes have of us.”
Cathy has always been keenly aware of the unspoken responsibilities that come with her position. “I always knew that a lot of eyes were on me,” she says. Many of those eyes were not particularly friendly ones – a fact that made her a lot more risk-averse in her early days in leadership. “As a person of color leading a large water utility, you learn to take guarded risk.”
However, as Cathy is only too aware, risk is an inherent part of innovation. “You have to be willing to put things out there… you have to be open to failing.” Many minority utility leaders lack the support they need to “fail forward” and thus drive bold innovation in their utilities.
The MLUU amplifies the voices of minority-led utilities so that they can meet their sustainability and environmental justice goals. It provides minority utility leaders with guardrails to allow them the freedom to boldly innovate in the water space to the same extent as their peers. At the same time, the MLUU also encourages participants to elevate the socio-economic and environmental sustainability needs of disadvantaged communities within their utility service area.
Beyond GCCW, the MLUU has spurred enthusiastic engagement from end-users in South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, and beyond. As the network of trials for this Reservoir continues to expand, we look forward to connecting disadvantaged communities across the U.S. with technologies that can help meet their needs in new and innovative ways.
A tool for self-advocacy
My role with the Trial Reservoir has in some ways been the culmination of a life-long passion for environmental justice. Over the course of my academic and professional career, I have seen the disproportionate environmental harms that affect our most vulnerable populations. I’ve seen the lack of green space result in urban flooding on Chicago’s South Side, and lead service lines clustered in some of the lowest-income areas in Washington, DC.
Although we have access to incredible technologies that can treat, distribute, and recover water better than ever before, those technologies often don’t find their way into the hands of those who need them most. With this Trial Reservoir, I see the chance to help right some of those inequities by lowering the barrier to innovation and amplifying the voices of minority and disadvantaged communities.
Being a Trial Reservoir manager has helped me to grow as a professional and as a person. I’ve helped to develop performance metrics, coordinate documentation, and draft media and press releases: tasks that have helped me in my duties as a Project Manager. On a personal level, working with the MLUU Trial Reservoir has given me the opportunity to interface with minority utility leaders across the country who are working diligently to make their communities better, one drop at a time.
I believe that the MLUU is a unique opportunity to expand our work into communities who could greatly benefit from the financial and programmatic support that the Trial Reservoir provides. I look forward to broadening our horizons, reaching communities who have not heard of the Trial Reservoir or Isle. I look forward to collaborating with new categories of end-users, such as small rural systems who might benefit from utilizing the Trial Reservoir as a bridge to larger, more slow-moving funding opportunities. Most importantly, I am excited to see how the MLUU evolves to support the network of other fantastic organizations already in this space, particularly those working directly with disadvantaged communities.
Not all environmental equity challenges can be solved with technology alone. However, I hope that the MLUU can be part of a larger toolkit that disadvantaged communities can use to self-advocate in their fight for environmental justice.
If you are interested in learning more about the MLUU – or know someone who might be! – please reach out at [email protected] for more information.