Managing the Water and Wastewater Utility

This book has been written with the hope that it will serve as an inspiration to students and young professionals in the water and wastewater field to take on the challenges and responsibilities of utility management. The rewards are great. You will have the opportunity to work with wonderful people, have stable employment generally unaffected by business cycles, and become an important member of...

Reviewers selected by the publisher who were asked to comment on the draft included Stephen P. Graef of the Western Carolina Regional Sewer Authority in Greenville, South Carolina; Patrick T. Karney of the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio; and Douglas M. Stewart of the Orange County Sanitation District in Fountain Valley, California.

This section is broadly focused on topics that build a foundation for the rest of the book. The first chapter presents the history of the water and wastewater utility in the context of the development of civilization.

The utility manager is the chief executive officer of a very important business—often it is one of the larger businesses in town. Money is essential to any business. In fact, one way of looking at the utility is that it is just a mechanism the public uses to turn money into water or wastewater service of the highest affordable quality.

The most enduring feature of the utility is the physical infrastructure. If history can be a guide, the infrastructure will outlast all of the people, the procedures, and even the culture of the utility. In some countries, it has also outlasted several national governments.

One of the consistent themes that make up the management philosophy on which this book is based is the careful stewardship of the utility’s infrastructure. The organizational responsibilities and techniques of infrastructure asset management are spread through the book the way that they are normally spread through the utility. Infrastructure is addressed in...

For more definitions, see http://www.epa.gov/safewater/glossary.htm and http://www.epa.gov/OCEPAterms/tterms.html (this site also has a section devoted to acronyms).