All utilities face challenges. Some challenges are a lot bigger.
Imagine for a moment being a 29-year-old professional engineer overseeing an ill-equipped and undermanned sewer department in the state’s poorest community, with nearly century-old sewer and water pipes needing tens of millions of dollars of repair and the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice tapping you on the shoulder about Clean Water Act violations.
Welcome to the world of Brian Pena, water and sewer commissioner for the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, a Merrimack River Valley town 25 miles north of Boston. Pena started at City Hall on a Tuesday in
