Tad Bohannon leads the largest public drinking water system in Arkansas, serving 500,000 consumers and 18 cities. Tad's law degree, water licenses, and recent Master's degree from the University of Oxford combine to make him the perfect man to lead Central Arkansas Water through the 21st Century.
Tad and Aquasight Founder Mahesh Lunani discuss how CAW is set up and governed, including their naming of a Chief Innovation Officer to their team, and how that new role may change. Also, typical Mergers and Acquisitions legal work does not apply to water systems. Tad explains why.
While a lack of fresh, clean water isn't a problem in his district, Central Arkansas Water faces many of the same problems as other water systems, including how to protect the land around that water, how to pay for new infrastructure, and the regionalization of water districts.
Data will be very important to the future of water. Tad and Mahesh discuss available technologies, what consumers will want, and some of the ways we can use data to be proactive. In fact, he sees the future not as a water company, but as a technology company.
In addition to talking about how COVID-19 has changed the current workforce, Tad and Mahesh brainstorm some ways to attract the water workers of tomorrow. This includes a number of ways to reach out to students and teachers at the high school level. Also, water employees must be engaged with their local communities. And when someone asks what they do, there are a number of better answers than, "I work for the water department."
More:
Central Arkansas Water Website: https://carkw.com/
Tad Bohannon Bio: https://carkw.com/about/our-team/tad-bohannon/
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
Mahesh: Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm with Tad Bohannon, chief executive officer of Central Arkansas Water. Todd is leading the largest public drinking water system in Arkansas, serving over half a million customers in 18 cities, pat as licensed and practicing law maintains licenses for water, treatment and distribution, and recently completed an MBA from university of Oxford.
He has a unique combination of law management and water. And I look forward to a fascinating discussion attack, welcome tab.
Tad: Oh, thank you very much. We're very happy to be with you today and thank you for this opportunity
Mahesh: Real pleasure. So I want to get right into it. You would a practicing attorney, you talk law and do university of Arkansas little rock and switch to public sector.
To run the largest water system in state of Arkansas. What is the driving force behind the schedule change?
Tad: For me, I think the driving force was a desire to make even a bigger social and community impact. In my practice of law, I actually represented a number of water and wastewater utilities around the state, and I was able to have some impact.
And how that happened. But I, I looked to come to the industry when the opportunity was provided, because to put it bluntly, I, I drank the water. Kool-Aid vibrant communities and economies require viable water systems and without water communities and local economies crumbles. When I'm looking around the state and looking at some of the problems that the state is facing now, and even into the future, I thought I want to be a part of helping to solve those problems and solving those challenges that communities are facing today is critical for the success
of the next generation.
Mahesh: Real motivation as I hear you is the part of you is being public service to the community. Not many can think like that these days. Can you describe central Arkansas water in numbers, the size, the operations capital investments, who they can? The second part of my question is what is your vision for the system?
Tad: Sure. Central Arkansas water has about 152,000 meters. About 2,700 miles of pipe three water treatment plants, two water supply lakes. We serve in about seven counties. We serve almost all of Palasky county, which is where the capital city of little rock is located. And we're pushing right at a half million people that we serve and provide water.
Some of that services, retail, and then some of that services, wholesale supply just surrounding communities. As far as the vision this is a really interesting question for us right at this time, because. In December of 2021, the board of commissioners recently adopted a 20, 50 strategic vision.
And that vision was driven by a lot of things that I think are critical. And as the board, and I talked about these things, what is it we need to be in the future. And it's very simple. It's to be a resilient and trusted utility. When we look at various mission statements and purpose statements of water utilities around the country.
They resolve for the most part around the concept of providing high quality, reliable water services. And if that's not in there, it's that they want to be a best in class. So they want to be a world-class utility. And I guess if we're all going to achieve that vision, we're going to have to come up with some sort of water, utility playoff system to determine who really is the best.
But in reality, I think we need to focus on being. That's going to make us financially viable. And it also makes the systems reliable. Both of those things have to fit in there for us to be resilient to whatever changes are coming in the future. So that's why we focused on the resiliency thing. The other part of it is I said, we have to be trusted because when you look for it's just take the capital infrastructure and the dollars that it's going to take for every utility across the country to replace the aging infrastructure.
That we have, if our rate payers don't trust us, if they're not absolutely sure that we are being good stewards of their dollars and that we are taking care of those systems, they're not going to trust us with their rates to be able to make the improvements that we need, especially. In this time of general distrust in government.
So if we want to be able to gain the access to capital that we need, I think we are going to have to make sure that we are trusted by the communities we serve in our rate payers.
Mahesh: Those two words, resiliency and trust. There's a lot into those two words. I'm really thrilled that that is the pillars for your 2050 vision.
Let me add a follow on question to that. How are you organized today? At an operating level and a governing level. So the one below you at the one above you, and how will that change to meet your vision that you just outplayed on resilience and trust?
Tad: First of all, I'll start with the governance structure first and trust is going to be one of those issues that builds into it.
CAW was formed after we went to the legislature and got authorization for brand new act called the consolidated waterworks authorization act in 2001. And it was actually formed by the merger. Of the little rock municipal waterworks and the north of Iraq, municipal waterworks, which are two independent cities, just on the opposite side of the Arkansas river.
When those two systems were merged, we have a board of seven members, four commissioners must be residents of little rock, and three commissioners must be residents of north. I think one of the governance issues that is going to be long-term issue that's going to have to be addressed is as we look at regionalization, even further regionalization than we've already accomplished, and the whole industry grapples with this concept of customers that have no set.
There's a lot of cities that serve outside their city boundaries. And I hate to speak for the entire industry. With the general industry attitude is you signed on to get our city wide. You knew when you signed on you wouldn't get representation. And so I think long-term either the legislature is going to make municipalities, not just caw, but other public water supply systems address those issues are the customers themselves are kind of say, Hey, we want survive.
So I think in the longterm, we're going to have to look at governance right now. It's off the table. We recently a couple of years ago, consolidated. A neighboring city called and they had their own water system in their own wastewater system. And when we first started discussions, one of their commissioners asked, will we get a seat on the board?
And my response was no, if that's a problem, if that's a deal breaker, we could just pack up our briefcases and we can go home right now. We were able to get through those hurdles. We were able to develop the long-term relationships that it still worked out, that the consolidation was a mess. But I do think in the long run, that's going to become an issue.
And I think you're seeing more and more state legislatures around the country. Step up and say, we're going to address it since you all won't address it. So I think that's an issue for us operationally. We're set up much like many utilities. We have a CEO and then we have a chief finance officer and we have a chief operating officer in.
Just a couple of years ago, we added a chief innovation officer and it's not just innovation. It's about transformation. How do we work with our culture, with our own employees, with the communities we serve? How do we start? Long-term. Having conversations about these governance issues. I think there's a whole lot of things.
And so we're actually even kicking around, is it really innovation? We wanted to stress innovation at the time and we continue to stress innovation, but we've even been kicking around. Maybe it ought to be more like a chief transformation officer. We know we're going to have to change moving into the future.
So how do we manage that change? The operational representative. They're too busy running the system day to day to worry about the transformation issues, the finance people. They want to know what's going to happen in the long run on transformation, but they're too busy with customer service, sending out bills, collecting bills, issuing debt for current projects those types of things to worry about the long-term transformational Asha.
So I think for us, we're going to have to maintain and keep somebody focused on. Long-term transformation into the utility of the future.
Mahesh: What I find fascinating by a response to add the regionalization required the legal muscle that you have and the recognition that the organization needs to be transformed to get to the vision.
They acquired the MBA muscle in you. So the video going and the kind of skill sets you'll bringing and the background you have seems like a perfect fit.
Tad: I appreciate that. I've kind of reflected on that myself. When I was practicing law, in addition to representing water wastewater utilities, I actually did a lot of mergers and acquisitions work, including reverse takeovers and other things.
And I tell people in the water industry, you can't rate municipal water utility. I can't buy up 7% of their stock and demand a seat on the board. And those kinds of things that you can. In the stock market world and in the public offering world, but you do bring those skillsets and you bring the history of seeing how to work through those problems.
And one of them is oh, it's getting late. Let's come back tomorrow. And it's no nobody's getting up from this table till we hash it out. Tired people. Become much more reasonable about meeting in the middle rather than holding on to the fringes. And so it's just even that very simple approach on how do you handle these discussions in these negotiations that I think is critical.
So thank you.
Mahesh: No, definitely. I'd say it's a skill required if you actually want to drive regionalization. What are your top challenges? Central Arkansas water. And there are you putting all the investments that are either coming in from the federal government or accrued, or do you plan to make?
We
Tad: have the same challenges as every other water system infrastructure replacement, increasing regulatory requirements.
Maintaining affordability is huge. Workforce replace it. If you look at any water industry, survey of top CEOs of what are the challenges that you have, we have the same ones. The one challenge we are fortunate to not have is water supply. We are not an arid state. We utilize two water supply lakes, and we have plenty of capacity to get us to.
20 70, 20, 80 and beyond water shortage is, is not a problem. That is not an issue that we have to deal with. In fact, we're very fortunate to have very high water quality. So one of our highest priorities and where we put money right now is protection of our watershed. Everybody wants to build their house with a view of the lake, but that view comes with a price that is not the price of the lot.
It endangers water quality, it increases nutrient loading. It increases opportunity for pollution and many other factors that come into play from development of a watershed. So we have invested millions and we will continue to invest more in measures to protect water quality through protecting the watersheds around our supply lakes.
Just recently, last year we issued the first green bonds specifically for the purpose of buying land in the water. We're going to use some of the money for more efficient motors and more of the infrastructurally that you typically think of for a green bond. But one thing that was unique about this offering it was the first one to protect watersheds is focused on protecting the water quality long before it gets to our treatment plant.
We're also focused on replacing infrastructure. One of the things we have to explain to the public, whether it's really simple, the economics are simple infrastructure components with a 20 or 50 year useful life were paid for in 30 years. Past utilities, issue 30 year debt on assets that were going to last at least 50.
So they had a period of 20 years where rate payers benefited from artificially low rates because the prior rate payers paid for all the infrastructure. And now. Current rate payers are getting to use that infrastructure without having to meet those capital demands in those capital needs. Now that every study comes out about the United States infrastructure, is it stock good?
And we're in good shape. Don't get me wrong. We're not in horrible shape, but we have substantial infrastructure in the ground past its useful life. If you look at engineering standards, And so they've gone 20 years without paying for those capital improvements. And now they're going to have to start paying for capital replacements.
And so how we educate the public on the need for additional rate dollars to be able to keep the capital and to keep the infrastructure in a good shape is our one of our biggest challenges. And we continue to address that. With looking, exploring different ways for alternative revenues to long-term bonds.
Nothing different than anybody else that's looking at. I think the last one that we have to work on is human capital. Every utility, their employees are the most important asset they have and maintaining the current workforce as well as finding the next generation of workers is critical. We talk about it that nothing that caw works well without how performing innovative values driven, informed, and passionate.
That's what we need in our workforce. And when we have that things work smoother and we are more innovative and we come up with better ways of doing things. And I think that's critical.
Mahesh: Most people invest in buying water. You are investing in buying land to protect the wall. And that's a very fascinating model you have, and because you are lucky to have all the water you want compared to the other parts of our country, correct?
I did tremendously like the fact that the population today is milking. The investments made 50 years ago. And for the last 20 years it's been suppressed. And I think that's a great way to explain to the residents to say why the investments have to be made now probably can last the next 50 years. And that's a really simple, intuitive, very powerful explanation, really.
And, and for some reason, I think the infrastructure is a very sexy word at the moment in the country. As I was researching tad, it was clear to me that one of your big goal is to drive regionalization economies of scale consolidation, where it makes sense, not for acquisition, for the sake of acquisition, almost like something that.
Four years ago with not quite called regional water architect. It's a paper we wrote along with seven other CEOs. I feel like you are the regional water architect for state of Arkansas and the way you're going about doing it. And you kind of described the drivers. What's your game plan. And is there a success story you can share?
Tad: Sure. I talk about it. Every opportunity I get and central Arkansas water was a early regionalization. I was talking to some. Mayor's association meeting recently, and I said, you're going to struggle. It's always going to be a problem. And you're always going to be concerned till you reach a meter count that makes you viable and allows you to maximize your economy of scales.
And one of the mayors came up afterwards and she said, well, I looked at the three cities next to me, and we're still less than 10,000 meters. If all three of us get together. And my response was your circle's not big. You just need it's that simple. And so there are a number of regional different approaches that are happening in the state.
They were all been fairly recently, which is good, but there's a couple of wholesale regional beaver water district is a wholesale provider to four major cities up in Northwest Arkansas. And it's been around for awhile, but it kind of follows a, we'll have a regional water supply, but we'll each keep our own.
Distribution systems and believe water supply is a critical area for regionalization. I wholeheartedly agree with it. The expense of water supply that expensive large transmission mains moving water from one base into another is best shared by multiple utility. But the economies of scale that can be gained at that level are relatively small.
When you think about the total operating cost of a utility, and it's when you start really looking at the shared services of billing, human resources, community outreach, even operations. If you're a small utility and you're buying a hundred meters a month, you're going to get one cost. We buy 10,000 meters a year.
We hit a different cost. That's an economy of scale. That's realized by scale and volume. And so while I think it's great that utilities are coming together for these regional water sources, I think they even need to be looking further to even what other economies of scale can be gained through. The shared services, whether it's truly just shared services or whether it's a consolidation of those operating and financial networks is up to those local communities to.
But the more that they can share and the more that they can drive to a regional approach for not just water supply, but operational expenses. I think they're doing a better job for the rate payers. Everybody wants to have control of their water system, but is that really what's best for the rate payers, rate payers want the water to turn on when they turn the knob on, on the kitchen sink and they want the toilet to flush when they flush it.
And they really don't care where it comes from. I think we have to realize that. In Arkansas, it's a unique problem in that we have 3 million people. We're a relatively small state, but we still have 700 community water systems. There's only one system in the state that serves more than a hundred thousand people, not central Arkansas water, only six, including central Arkansas water serve more than 50,000 people.
70, 75% of the system serve less than 5,000. It worked at one time. It works as long as there's free federal money, as long as they can keep coming back for a handout to say, well, we don't have the funds to replace our water tower, but it's fallen down. Will you grant us the money they'll limp along, but if that free federal money ever goes away, these systems are going to be in huge, in huge trouble.
What experience can we bring to help you? Remain sustainable and viable to find a way to get there and do that. And I think that's really important because without that efficiencies of scale go unrealized and scarcely available, capital dollars are wasted on unnecessary infrastructure and we can't afford in the water industry to waste dollars.
We need them get the maximum use out of. A recent success story is the city of MoMA. is a neighboring city, about 9,000 meters, always fiercely independent. Didn't want anything to do with little rocker, north rock, nevermind that 80% of their workforce strives and do little rocker north of Iraq to work because it's really a bedroom residential community that they had low quality.
If you listened to the citizens, they were having to price her water heaters every five years premature failure, not just of the water system, but of the water components within the houses. And they were going to have to spend a ton of money to construct a new water plant, to be able to treat that water and.
Double rates at a minimum. And they looked at well, what would it cost to connect to just caw system? And then even the citizens is great community outreach because as citizens who had been taking out empty milk jugs with them, Just fill up while they were at work and then take it home. So they had clean water to drink back in my mail.
They said, what's this about just join them, just consolidate. We like central Arkansas water. We want their water. They do good job. And so it was a, it actually became an easy decision. For the politicos within the community, because the citizens say we've got great water, right next door to us, they do a great job of managing their system.
Why would we want to replicate that? Another quick example? There is a detached system that has been having problems for years. At a court recently appointed us receiver. Now we don't know what the exit strategy is going to be, but we walked up to a customer and said we noticed you got sewage flowing out on your ground here.
What's what's happening there. And they said, oh, it's been doing that for at least four years when I bought that house. And it's only bad whenever I flushed the toilet, take the shower. Because of resource, lack of resources within the local community and resources at the disposal of central Arkansas water, we had their wastewater system up and operating within a couple of days after the court appointed us receiver, we were able to reach out to other wastewater utilities who then said, you're right.
This is a system that we need to be held. And they brought their vac contracts. It spent a day helping clean out the system. Regionalization is more than just consolidation. It's getting us working together on a regular basis to help each other out
Mahesh: The examples you gave me the consolidation part, but really driven by a crisis.
What actually the point you made earlier, economics versus country. If we can take out the mindset of control and focus on the mindset of economics, I think you have a much more proactive play, so you don't get behind the eight ball, but ahead of it in terms of driving that. So it is clear to me, you deeply thought about it in many dimensions, that 700 community public systems with 3 million residents that just doesn't match up and something needs to be done.
Clearly it was clear to me. You enjoy. But from being from Arkansas and doing an MBA from university of Oxford, I can understand the east coast people closer to London, et cetera, and Boston. How did that come about?
Tad: Well, I think it's important just like we ask every employee to. Look at their knowledge and make an assessment of what further skills they need to further their career at the utility or in the industry, or however you just like, we focus on employee development for our frontline workers.
I think CEOs need to routinely assess their streaks of weaknesses and look at ways to improve themselves so that we can continue to move the utilities forward. And. Original thought. And those new discussions I think is critical and it happens some at conferences where. We all get together and talk about issues where we talk with private industry, that's driving change in different directions and how do we do that?
But I got through with an assessment and I started looking at here's some skills that I think I need to improve on. And then I started looking at, okay, how do I improve those skills? Everything I was looking at what would pop up was, well, there's this course at this MBA program or whatever, if you will.
Study that. And so then I thought, well, why not? So if I'm going to learn it, why not get the certificate that goes with it? And so I started doing an investigation and a typical tad fashion. I had a great big Excel spreadsheet where it had costs, travel costs, housing costs, and then it even had some comments about focus of the program and these types of things.
And so when you look at executive MBA programs, and then I started saying, okay, I'm a pure believer in a saying that is frequently attributed to Warren buffet that says if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And so I started looking and saying, okay, if I'm going to go do this, I want to be with incredibly smart individuals that I can learn from then you're looking at top programs in the country and in the world.
Most us executive programs you traveled to every other weekend. It's a three-day or a four day weekend. So you're in and out. You have a lot of concentration on subject matter while you're there, but you're just in and out all the time. So you don't have a long-term time to think, to look at it. When you look at traveling.
To a top program on the east coast or the west coast, or even up north and straight up to Chicago or whatever, when you look at those top programs, but you're traveling twice a month instead of once every five or six weeks as the Oxford program is the travel basically becomes relatively level. When you look at the cost.
So I'm buying one international flight versus two tickets to New York, or wherever the cost equalizes out and tuition while. Oxford's a bargain. I don't mean to sell our us program short, but do you want to go to a top us program? You're looking at 125, $150,000 in an Oxford is just not priced at that level.
And so it gave me an opportunity to learn from incredible people at one of the top training programs in the world. And then the other thing is Oxford is really focused on. Community development, bettering the world, even on a private business side. It's how can your private business make the world a better place?
A lot of MBA programs focus on finance. Go work on the stock market. Go work for Merrill Lynch. Go work for whatever in New York. University of Arkansas focuses on retail sales. Wonder why Walmart is right there. Different programs have different focuses. And the focus in Oxford really fit with it's an MBA, not a masters of public administration.
It's an MBA, but it really does focus on public improvement, improving the public sector. And then there's another little thing they have called the Oxford water network. Which is a multidisciplinary approach to solving water problems, not just within local communities, but on a global.
Mahesh: So it was clear to me, you thought through this one, before you actually joined, it was you analyze the heck out of this.
I will tell you, in 2004 and did something similar at Harvard and was at that time, I had 60 colleagues around the. It was one of the most fascinating experience that I've ever had in my life. Even though with all these engineering degrees I had, that was the best.
Tad: I'm excited to hear that because people sometimes look at me and tilt their head.
When I told my commission, I wanted to go to Oxford one of the chairman looked at me and he says, you're not talking about Oxford, Mississippi, are you? And I said, no, I'm not, but they've been very supportive
Mahesh: I just soaked in all those case studies. You know, the environment around us has changed. For example, me as a CEO, I'm a totally different CEO now than what I was three years ago, because I'm evolving and adapting a much more empathy, et cetera.
How have view since you became a CEO, how are you different now than when you started?
Tad: That's a great question. And I think there's many ways, but I'm going to focus on two that my staff probably appreciates the most one is I become more patient. When I first started as CEO, we were in a team meeting one time and we were talking about getting this program started and the chief operating officer actually said, Folks.
I don't think you're listening to tat he wanted it done yesterday and now I'm willing to wait at least until tomorrow and maybe next week, if the issues are relatively complex. So I think I've become more patient and understanding that with the amount of resources we have. Because every water utility struggles with having sufficient human capital resources to do everything that they need.
So with the amount of resources, I think we have to have long range plans. We have to stick with those plans, modifications as necessary, and then be a little more patient and how we make those changes, I think have also become much more aware that the more people you have in the room, the better off.
When you're working to address these long-term solutions, these long-term problems, challenges that are facing all of us. It can't be solved and it shouldn't even be attempt to be solved with the CS in the room. The chief operating officer, the chief you need the cashiers. If you're talking about customer service, you need the people laying the pipe.
If you're talking about distribution I think you really got to get a bigger group of. They're not always going to understand the financial issues, but the finance people, aren't going to understand the field issues. And so it takes this bigger group people and that slows things down, which takes you back to me in patient when you're trying to assemble and get this bigger group of people, input from them and then get them all on the same page.
But I think it's really critical. I think that's another area where I've changed more input is better, even if it slows things down.
Mahesh: So technology plays a more important role than ever before. What is your view in scheme of things at central Arkansas water? Where are you investing in technology?
Tad: I think it would be easier right now to say, whereas caw not investing in technology that said, we know we have a whole lot more technology that we need to invest in.
We are behind and we are playing catch. Because water is it's available and it's relatively cheap. We still read meters by people running from meter to meter. We have very limited deployment of AMI or AMR where water is more valuable and you need to know that there's. The incident happened. So those systems deployed those technologies very early on.
Now we're getting to a cycle though, that customers are demanding it. Even if water is not expensive, they want to know if they have a leak. They want to know if they're going to get a big water bill. They don't want that big water bill those types of things. So I think we're playing catch up in a lot of areas and that's in customer service, water quality.
Throughout the system, not just as it leaves the plant, but throughout the entire system data mining, I'll give you an example. We've been collecting critical source water information for decades and cooperation. United States geological service, but it's all been sitting there in this data reservoir. And we recently had a water quality issue pop up and we went to a consultant and they said, well, what water quality data do we have?
And we said here, and we dumped on them 30 years at the time. And they said, this is incredible. We have never seen this amount of data. Well, we had it, we just haven't been mining it. We hadn't been using it. And so I think every utility is developing all this data through their limb systems, through their remote water, quality monitoring, through all these things.
But due to lack of human resources, are they really maximizing their use of it. And I think that's something that we're gonna have. At some point, we're going to be a technology company that happens to sell water and not just caw. It may not happen in my lifetime, but at some point water utilities are going to hire more.
It people than they hire water treatment people. It's just going to get to that point. We're not there yet, but it's coming right.
Mahesh: This is the 14th episode Tad. And I've never had anybody say that yet, but I will tell you. That Elon Musk. He say, I am selling software just happens to be in the car.
Right? So clearly I think in everybody's sector, whether it's finance or insurance or healthcare tech plays a more important role, you could see that with what you're doing with the water now, pandemic, what are your challenges what's changed as a result of pandemic for you in your role?
Tad: The number one changed is work from home.
And I think that's across the board in many, many industries. If you would have asked me in February of 2020, if caw would have over a third of its workforce, working from home, I would have said, you're crazy. No way the public won't accept it. They already have this vision of the government employee.
And now we're going to send the government employee hall. To work at their kitchen table or wherever. I think the public outcry would have been. If we had people working from home would have been, ah, just more government waste or whatever, but that said overnight, we had our first case of COVID in central Arkansas on a Wednesday and March Friday, we sent all our employees home on Monday.
We started working from home. I w R I T folks and customer service folks were running all over in neighborhoods, cities, and even the Memphis and what have you by and laptops and buy and headsets so that our customer service representatives could work from home on their phone systems instead of coming to work, I don't know where this came from and I stole it from someplace, but I think it's a great analogy.
And I'll say, if you would have come to me and said, okay, We want you to explore working for home, we would have gone and hired a consultant. We would have paid them a couple of million dollars. It would have taken two or three years and it would have come back as non conclusive. And we did it overnight and it worked and we found that it doesn't work for every.
And you have to just watch those things, but it works for a lot. And so I think that's the biggest change. And even for our inspectors, we used to have them drive to the office, get into their utility truck, drive home. They just take their truck homes. Now they get up in the morning, they open up their iPad.
They sit down into their truck and boom. They go straight to their first job. So it saves everybody time, gas, money, everything. And so I think that's the biggest change.
Mahesh: I think the crisis created a new operating model essentially, and forced you into it. And it worked fabulously. That's a great example of a Friday.
Everybody went home Monday morning. And resilient organization in some respects you begin to community engagement that remains the centerpiece of all the decisions you may kind of kind of walk you through. How do you run the meetings where community becomes a center of every decision you make?
Tad: That's a great question. I think it's on a macro and a micro level, and I'm going to start with the micro level. We have our 10 principles of leadership that we use within the YouTube. And the last one is be engaged in the community and that's set at an individual. As I tell the folks that work here and that we work with, we make our living in these communities.
We should give back to these communities. So we need to be engaged. I don't care if it's coaching little league baseball or church basketball are serving on a non-profit board, are working at a soup kitchen or any of the many other ways that you can serve at work in your communities to better your communities picking up trash on litter days whatever.
We need to be engaged in the communities on a micro level, on a macro level. It is truly looking at what is the best for the community. How does that work best? And I'll just take it to economic. The stance of this utility forever was developers put in the infrastructure, give it to us, we'll operate it, but we're not going to extend infrastructure and utility costs.
One of the things we look at is if Amazon is going to put a distribution center and it's going to employ 400 people, that's a community benefit that helps us attack affordability. That gets a lot more people that can afford to pay them. So maybe we analyze what contributions the utility on a make into that project differently than how we've looked at it before.
That's just one example of how we look at what we're doing as part of a community and how we look at our policies to say, is that really driving? The economic welfare, which is our economic welfare, is the water utility. Is that really helping drive, creating a strong, vibrant community, therefore that can create a resilient water utility, because if you don't have a strong and vibrant community, there is no way you're going to have a resilient water utility.
Now I can't tell you Chicago water they've have already been through. I can't tell you, but I know that that's been a fundamental shift and how we think about issues within this utility is looking at the broader scope and Bronto picture. The other is education. We started three years ago. We educate teachers.
Teachers are required to have professional development. We started a program, a number of summers ago that we'll have teachers come in and spend two weeks with us. They go home, they learn all about a water system. Get in the Creek that flows into the lake and pick up rocks, looking for micro and vertebrae to look at the total health of water systems.
They understand fluid dynamics and hydraulics of pipe. And so they go home with curriculum that is about the water industry, but it teaches all the principle. It's lined up curriculum with the core requirement. They're what they're supposed to be teaching their kids. And so it's real life problems.
They're not just teaching a problem out of a textbook it's here's real life problems. Here's real life things that are going on in your community, solve this math problem or solve this science problem. And we'll look at it through a water industry. It also helps spark kids' interest in entering the water community.
We're gonna within one of the local high schools, put a. Distribution operator license course. We're going to build a system in some vacant lamp they got, so they can do leak detection. They can break down a fire hydrant, they can repair a meter. One of the things I've really got to talk to Aww about, but I want to figure out how I can put a high school team together and enter interim in hydrant, hysteria, and the pipe tapping contest and these types of things.
Kids are going to eat that up. And then we're exposing people to the industry.
Mahesh: Yeah, this is outstanding. Outstanding. How you are engaging the community, especially the teacher concept. Very fascinating and more importantly, creating this water treatment lab in a high school. Maybe every utility does it.
And at AWWA, you have a high. Contest just like the robotics high school contest, or maybe this is, this podcast is the beginning of this idea, tad that you can take David law and saying, David, this is what we want to do to get the next generation workforce engaged is create high school water treatment.
Tad: You've just taken my idea and taking it to a whole new level. And so I'm excited about that thing.
Mahesh: No. Well, it's your idea and it remains your idea. And I would like you to share this to the rest of the world, but listen, that brings me to the next generation workforce, which is the last question on our discussion here.
How do you engage the build, this beautiful, the fascinating new concepts you have? How do you attract? Because first of all, there's a labor shortage. Right. Especially the engineers, some talented and so on, and they are not picking up water as a desired sector. So how do you get them on board?
Tad: We are coming upon generations of more and more people that want to make a impact early, and they want to make that social impact.
We have to rethink. How we operate in that we're all recognizing that currently the younger generation and potentially future generations, aren't going to stay with the utility this month. We're celebrating them. Utility employees been here 45 years. That's not going to be the workforce of the future.
I'd love for it to be, but trying to accept the reality that it's, not going to be. And so I think we have to make water safe. You said it yourself. It's not the most dynamic thing finance or our it, or Sydney rockets to the moon or whatever is a whole lot more. But you know, there is no more noble pursuit than providing clean water, protecting public health and protecting the environment all at the same time.
And we have to talk about it in terms of that. We tell people all the time when people say, don't just say you work for the water you take. Somebody asks you work, you do your answer cannot be. I worked for the water utility. It has to be something more than that. And by that it's something like, I make sure that the tap water you drink is of the highest quality possible and that it safe.
At that it's safe are I make sure that the water gets from our treatment plant to your faucet in a good condition and it's reliable so that every time you turn on your water we provide water in the communities that we serve in a manner that's reducing our carbon footprint. There has to be.
Better explanation of what we do then just, I work for the water utility. And when you start digging into those things and you start telling people what you do and you start telling kids what they're going to do, if that's what they enter as a profession, I think it starts talking to them. Now we also have to tell them you're not going to get rid of.
Well, unless you go to work for one of the private tiers, but you're not going to get rich, but you'll be able to look in the mirror every day and say, I make my community better every day. And I think that's critical.
Mahesh: What you're talking about is describe the outcomes of what your job is to the community.
Not what role you play in a utility. That's correct. That's a better way of engaging. If I just sum up the conversation, you are trying to create this resilient, trusted, biggest water system, regional water architect. That's using comics as a way of defining the what's best for the residents as you regionalize it looking at infrastructure funding and how best to explain why this infrastructure funding is required for the next 50 years.
And there's a whole slew of. You know how you describe the technology water company will be a technology company, delivering water. And this idea that you had of engaging, creating a water lab in high school and having the high school students live the world of water utility in a fascinating context.
And if you could just extended Nash. These are really a traits of the practical CEO coming up with practical solutions. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned so much today through this and I appreciate you being part of this podcast.
Tad: Well, thank you very much. I'm honored to be here. I appreciate everything you are doing to the industry and from.
Business that you operate to hosting this podcast because podcasts like this is how we learn from each other. I really appreciate you doing that and allowing me to be a part of it. The work you're doing the work at Aqua site is critical. We will all work in together, make the world a better place.
Mahesh: There's nothing wrong when you share good stuff. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Tad: Alright, thank you.