With one third of the water workforce eligible to retire in the next 10 years, the water industry faces a shortage of professionals qualified to perform mission-critical jobs of operating and maintaining our water and wastewater infrastructure.

In response to this imminent crisis, all 14 New England and state professional drinking water and wastewater associations have teamed up to fund New England Work for Water, an initiative focused on creating a sustainable workforce development organization for all New England water utilities. To accomplish this goal, the organization is seeking help from every water and wastewater utility in New England in in completing this online survey by Feb. 15.

The purpose of this short online survey is to determine whether water/wastewater service providers are experiencing shared workforce challenges that might be best addressed through regional collaboration.

The survey will provide the steering committee with data to develop the initiative plan and actions. Data from the survey will be analyzed by the Water Environment Federation at the regional level. Data provided from individual water organizations will not be shared.

About New England Work for Water 

Water industry leaders from each of the six New England states are working together as part of this initiative's steering committee. The committee has also contracted with a consultant to develop a New England Workforce Collaborative that will ultimately be funded by New England's utilities.

The committee will work with the consultant to define how the New England Workforce Collaborative would be structured to reflect New England's unique utility framework, which includes many small, independent town-level utilities and address the following objectives:

• Develop and recruit qualified candidates for mission-critical jobs;
• Provide current employees with the information and skills they need in order to do reliable work;
• Upgrade work tools and processes to optimize use of existing staff; and
• Increase the cost-effectiveness of workforce investments through collaboration.

The intent is to provide equity and equality across each state and water sector to inform the final recommended organizational structure that will be able to meet the unique recruiting, training and employment needs of New England water and wastewater utilities.

Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/H25KTSC