Award Winners
Portland Water District
2023 Sustainable Water Utility Management Award
Portland Water District (PWD), as Maine's largest water and wastewater utility, emphasizes sustainable practices and long-term reliability. They actively participate in the Maine Water Assistance Program, providing substantial financial aid to households in need. Water resource protection is a priority, with robust land conservation efforts and partnerships like the Sebago Clean Waters initiative. In 2020, they secured $8 million for land conservation in the Sebago Lake watershed.
Toho Water Authority
2023 Gold Award for Exceptional Utility Performance
Toho Water Authority has efficiently managed its growing customer base and aging infrastructure through a cost-effective asset management program over the past two decades. They prioritize water resource management through regional partnerships and, in October 2022, merged with St. Cloud Utilities to enhance water service resiliency, particularly during severe weather events. Toho also emphasizes customer service through initiatives like "Toho Cares," focusing on team and customer satisfaction, staff training, communication, and benchmarking.
Upper Trinity Regional Water District
2023 Gold Award for Exceptional Utility Performance
Upper Trinity Regional Water District (UTRWD) serves a rapidly growing area in North Texas, delivering clean and dependable drinking water to a significant population. Their recent accomplishments involve infrastructure expansion, construction projects, and recognition in the water sector, highlighting their dedication to providing reliable water and wastewater services. Despite budget challenges, UTRWD's Board of Directors managed to balance the budget with a modest rate increase, ensuring fiscal soundness. Additionally, their success in water conservation earned them recognition as an "Exemplary Wholesale Utility."
Valley Water
2023 Environmental Justice and Equity Award
Valley Water, the largest multipurpose water supply and special district in California, has a long history of serving its community equitably to ensure access to safe, clean water, flood protection, and environmental stewardship for all. The utility’s unique structure enables a comprehensive regional approach to water resources management and stewardship that centers environmental justice (EJ) in planning and service delivery. Valley Water’s Board of Directors adopted EJ guidelines into its Governance Policies in February 2021, setting the tone and promoting EJ alignment throughout the agency. Resulting initiatives include the Water Rates Assistance Program to provide financial assistance to low-income families struggling to pay their water bills, the Balancing Act tool to enable direct public input into their budget process, and the tribal liaison function.
Washington Suburban and Sanitary Commission (WSSC)
2023 Environmental Justice and Equity Award
WSSC Water, Maryland’s largest water utility, focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, and environmental justice (DEI&EJ) to ensure the system operates as an anchor institution in the communities in which it serves. Through its internal and external programs, initiatives, and practices, WSSC Water guarantees that DEI&EJ efforts are weaved throughout the system to ensure sustainable measures during and beyond the current leadership’s tenure. WSSC Water’s DEI&EJ focus areas include its employees (Team H2O), community and stakeholder engagement, supplier diversity through minority and small local business enterprises, public health, equitable and environmentally just operations, investigations and resolution of equal opportunity issues, and capital improvement planning and prioritization.
Cape Fear Public Utility Authority
2022 Gold Award for Exceptional Utility Performance
Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA) is a regional leader in water treatment to remove PFAS. This year, CFPUA will bring a new deep-bed Granular Activated Carbon filter technology online at its primary water treatment plant, a $46 million investment to ensure the quality of the water provided to customers. Through CFPUA’s 10-year Capital Improvement Plan totaling $511 million, the utility has a consistent focus on rehabilitation and replacement of aging infrastructure, resulting in significant decreases in sewer and water line breaks. Providing strong customer service is also central to CFPUA initiatives. Between 2017 and 2021, CFPUA implemented an Enterprise Resource Planning solution that improved customers’ ease of doing business, from an online self-service portal to more accurate and efficient meter reading.
Coachella Valley Water District
2022 Sustainable Water Utility Management Award
Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) is a first-time sustainable award winner. The district demonstrates its commitment to sustainability in water supply, operations, disadvantaged communities, and customer programs. CVWD has invested in and implemented large water importation projects to replenish extracted groundwater. The utility also uses recycled water for landscape irrigation. CVWD also founded a Disadvantaged Communities Infrastructure Task Force, which plans, coordinates, and identifies opportunities for water and sewer infrastructure projects in disadvantaged communities; identifies funding opportunities; reports on progress; and discusses potential barriers to help disadvantaged communities receive grant funding for infrastructure projects.
Fort Wayne City Utilities
2022 Sustainable Water Utility Management Award
Fort Wayne City Utilities is a second-time sustainable award winner. Since receiving its first award in 2019, the utility has continued to demonstrate an immense commitment to protecting and responsibly using natural, financial, and human resources. Fort Wayne City Utilities is currently designing a state-of-the-art Microgrid Solutions to help the utility better utilize existing generation assets, improve electrical demand profile, increase resiliency to utility outages, and allow for easy implementation of renewable generation resources. By 2023, the utility will have installed 5 megawatts (MW) solar array that will float on its wet weather ponds, energy storage batteries, and an additional 4.5 MW of NG driven generation.
Fort Worth Water
2022 Sustainable Water Utility Management Award
Fort Worth Water demonstrates its commitment to effective utility management and sustainability in several areas. Of note, the utility established a career pipeline, P-TECH, with a local school district and college to enable high school students to graduate with water and trade certifications and associate’s degrees. The utility also revamped its leak detection efforts to reduce actual loss, avoided rate increases in three of the past four years because of customer growth and more accurate metering, and eliminated all known city-side lead service lines from the system. A new biosolids facility replaces belt presses with a drum dryer to create a pelletized product having 90 percent of the water content removed, with an anticipated 40 percent reduction in operating costs and savings of almost $2 million annually.
Orange County Water District
2022 Platinum Award for Utility Excellence
Orange County Water District (OCWD) is an international leader in water reuse and groundwater management and home to the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) – the world’s largest advanced water purification project for potable reuse. OCWD recently broke ground on the GWRS Final Expansion. Upon completion in 2023, the GWRS Final Expansion will recycle 100 percent of available wastewater flows, add 34,000 acre-feet per year of recycled water into the basin, and provide 130 million gallons of drinking water every day, enough to serve 1 million people. OCWD addressed PFAS in the basin by launching the nation’s largest pilot project to test 14 types of treatment media and identify cost-effective treatment technologies. Sound planning and investment, exceptional water quality, environmental stewardship, sound fiscal management, and transparency are hallmarks of the system.
San Antonio Water System
2022 Sustainable Water Utility Management Award
San Antonio Water System (SAWS) has continued to make strides in fiscal management, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility since winning its first sustainable award in 2019. In April 2020, SAWS started receiving 50,000 acre-feet per year of water from the Vista Ridge Project. The benefits include decreased reliance on the Edwards Aquifer from 66 percent in 2019 to 51 percent of total water supply in 2022; improved Edwards Aquifer spring flows and endangered species habitats; and increased resilience to any climate-related adverse impacts to water sources. SAWS also kept rates affordable for its constituents during the pandemic and in response to 2021 Winter Storm Uri led a drive raising over $1.1 million dollars to help provide repairs to over 1,100 low-income households.
Seattle Public Utilities
2022 Platinum Award for Utility Excellence
Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) is committed to operational excellence, leverages technology, and ensures its investment decisions are informed by financial, environmental, and social impact life-cycle costs and benefits. SPU’s Strategic Business Plan charts the utility’s investments, operations, and service quality. Operational response, customer satisfaction, system performance, and equity and inclusion are among the performance metrics tracked by the utility. Workforce efforts focus on racial equity resulting in high numbers of hires and promotions for diverse populations. SPU also engages the community in robust outreach by offering financial assistance programs and investing to achieve community priorities.