In this episode of 21st Century Water, Mahesh Lunani speaks with Will Pickering, CEO of Pittsburgh Water, about the transformative changes he has overseen in Pittsburgh's water infrastructure. Pickering shares his unconventional journey into utility leadership, tracing his career from public policy roles in Washington, D.C., to heading a water utility that was in dire need of reform when he joined.
Pickering discusses the challenges Pittsburgh Water faced, including outdated infrastructure, lead service line contamination, and public distrust exacerbated by national crises like Flint, Michigan. Since joining in 2016, Pickering has prioritized rebuilding customer trust and modernizing the utility through strategic investments. Notably, Pittsburgh Water has replaced more than half of its lead service lines at no cost to customers, aided by federal grants and low-interest loans. This proactive approach has established the utility as a national model for lead mitigation.
Pickering also highlights the utility's shift from a reactive "fix-it-when-it-breaks" model to a proactive philosophy that emphasizes long-term planning, public engagement, and affordability. A rebranding effort, launched recently, aims to unify the utility's identity and signal a break from its troubled past, while reinforcing a "one water" approach across drinking water, sewer, and stormwater services.
In addressing broader challenges like climate change and infrastructure resilience, Pickering stresses the importance of preparing for unpredictable risks, from extreme weather to cybersecurity threats. Under his leadership, Pittsburgh Water is leveraging data-driven tools like asset management systems and predictive analytics to prioritize investments and extend the life of critical assets.
Looking ahead, Pickering identifies affordability, regulatory compliance (particularly around emerging contaminants like PFAS and microplastics), and customer engagement as key focus areas. He envisions a utility that continues to innovate and serve as a national leader in water management, emphasizing that building a resilient, customer-focused organization is a legacy he hopes will endure long after his tenure.
The episode concludes with a reflection on the importance of adaptable, forward-thinking leadership in the water sector, as Pickering’s commitment to both community and operational excellence shines through.
Pittsburgh Water Website: https://www.pgh2o.com/
Voiceover (00:02):
Tremendous challenges and opportunities exist right now for our nation's water infrastructure. In this podcast, the industry's top leaders and innovative minds share their knowledge and insights for ensuring our water systems are operating safely and efficiently.
These discussions are designed to motivate and create vibrant 21st century water systems and the innovative workforce required to lead and operate them. This is 21st Century Water, with your host Aquasight founder & CEO, Mahesh Lunani.
Mahesh Lunani (00:33):
Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I am really excited to have Will Pickering, CEO of Pittsburgh Water. Will's journey to water utility leadership is anything but conventional. With a background in public policy, communication and public administration, he has cultivated high spanning roles in the mayor's office, district transportation, DC Water, and now as a CEO of Pittsburgh Water.
Will holds a degree in political science from Santa Clara University and is a certified public manager from George Washington University. I'm excited to welcome Will to the podcast to discuss the strategies, operations and leadership principles that he brings to this role, as well as the innovation and public service efforts driving changes at Pittsburgh Water. Welcome, Will.
Will Pickering (01:28):
Great to be with you Mahesh.
Mahesh Lunani (01:29):
Real pleasure, real pleasure, I'm really looking forward to this session. So, you have a very interesting background. What inspired you to pursue a career in water utility leadership and more importantly, how has your perspective on the industry changed throughout this time?
Will Pickering (01:47):
It's interesting. I can safely say I did not set out after my educational career to be in this industry at all or really even consider a leadership role in this industry. I was exposed to water and wastewater through the role you mentioned, where I was working within a legislative affairs and policy group for the mayor of the District of Columbia in the early 2000s.
And the way that our responsibilities within that office were set up, I had a portfolio that involved infrastructure agencies and the District of Columbia Water and Sewer authority, as well as the regulatory body there locally in D.C.
That was the D.C., Department of Environment and Energy fell under my purview, and I needed to learn about these issues really quickly, I needed to learn about how they impacted residents and constituents, and I had to interact with the leaders of those organizations as they presented to city council and proposed legislation that they were asking for our mayor to champion.
And through that process, I got to meet George Hawkins, who remains a mentor to me. He was at the regulatory agency for the district and then transitioned to become the general manager and then CEO of the District of Columbia's Water and Sewer Authority.
And through that relationship and getting to see projects firsthand and interact with the teams there, when an opportunity presented itself at DC Water to do government relations work for them, I jumped at it just because I just was aware of how impactful the work is: life essential work that we're all doing here in the water industry.
And that relationship that I had with George and the knowledge from the legislative affairs perspective really jumped me into the industry and was really lucky when my family and I decided to relocate to Pittsburgh that there was an opportunity at Pittsburgh Water.
Much different, and I'm sure we'll get into that, much different than DC Water. But that experience was really critical for me to be able to jump into the role that I'm in now and maybe not jump, but evolve into the role that I have now, but certainly didn't set out this way.
I was always very interested in how government worked and how infrastructure worked. You mentioned I was at a Department of Transportation for a time, so a lot of our work within the water industry is happening in the public right of way. So, that knowledge and experience there has been immensely helpful.
So, I've seen infrastructure from a variety of different angles initially through sort of the communications and government affairs perspective and now I get it at a much broader view as leader of Pittsburgh Water.
Mahesh Lunani (04:21):
What I found fascinating with what you just said, two points. One is when you had this role in the mayor's office, you went deep into issues. You could have stayed at a policy level, so you went into learning more, which is fascinating to me. And second, the fact that you had a mentor which we all need, no matter what levels we are.
But in the year before you joined, I was working with all the utility agencies, I was advised by a number of folks in Pittsburgh, “You don't want to touch Pittsburgh Water right now. It's turmoil.” And then you came in. So clearly you must have known that this needed a fix; this needed somebody strong.
So, we'll get into detail, but can you provide an overview of the Pittsburgh Water landscape, the size, the services, the connections, the infrastructure, your budget? Just give us a view and for the audience for sure.
Will Pickering (05:17):
Sure. So, Pittsburgh Water is responsible for drinking water treatment in conveyance for the majority of the city of Pittsburgh not our entire geographic service area. Actually, Pennsylvania American Water Company and a couple other utilities have some service areas on the fringes of the city, but primarily, we're the drinking water provider.
We also provide sewer services to the entire city of Pittsburgh, and we have a storm water management responsibility. On an average day, we're serving about half a million people here within the city of Pittsburgh and we do provide what we term bulk water to some outer lying municipalities.
So, we have excess capacity at our drinking water treatment plant. We're able to provide treated drinking water to some of them, some that don't even know they're drinking Pittsburgh Water. We have that ability. So, it is pretty vast.
The city of Pittsburgh is … Steelers is our very well deserved and proud sports team, but it was a city that was built on the steel industry and industry and sort of water intensive and industrial uses that are no longer here.
And we're a city that has evolved into a lot of focus on robotics, a lot of interest and attention due to our universities here at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, and others. And our medical industry is a large driver of our industry now.
So, think about Pittsburgh and maybe that 1970s viewpoint, that's not who we are today. We're still proud of that heritage, but we're a much different community and really what that means is the water system currently as it stands, is not designed for the city we are today. And largely up until the last decade or so, sort of remained untouched until things broke.
So, for about a hundred years and we're catching up with some infrastructure that's 120 plus years old. We kind of left things buried under the ground and there wasn't a lot of foresight into the maintenance and replacement of those key pieces of our water infrastructure, especially our drinking water infrastructure, until pretty recently.
Mahesh Lunani (07:26):
No, clearly the city has evolved and I have a lot of friends who graduated from Carnegie Mellon and they do talk about how just tech savvy the city has become and for sure, Steelers. And Steelers and Lions are both actually the top four or five this year to be picked for winning the Super Bowl.
Now, what are the top challenges you are addressing in Pittsburgh Water today? You talked about maintenance for sure, and what strategies specifically are you implementing to overcome those challenges?
Will Pickering (08:02):
Sure. So, I mentioned we're playing a lot of catch up on infrastructure investment and you mentioned probably around that time you were advised to steer clear of Pittsburgh Water, I was getting similar advice.
The utility had exceeded the lead action level in summer of 2016. I joined the utility in fall of 2016. Really, a little scared, honestly, but excited for the opportunity because of the experience that I had in D.C., and just being engaged in utility associations where I felt I had something to offer my new city in knowing that despite a lead action level exceedance, these were things that could be overcome with wise investment, with leadership, getting customers to understand some of the issues.
Since 2016, a real primary focus for us has been first improving our corrosion control treatment to make sure that we're treating the water for those homes that still have lead service lines to the optimal levels. We added orthophosphate. That was our solution for that and then the other arm of that approach is just replacing as many service lines as possible.
And because of the lack of trust that we had with our customers, also the lead action level exceeded coming on the heels of the crisis in Flint, Michigan. Our crisis was different, but for many, this was front page news nationally.
We knew that we needed to approach lead service line replacement really intentionally. We committed to replacing full lead service lines despite there being a difference in ownership between the customer side and our responsibility.
We said if we're out there, whether it's private or public, if we find lead, we're going to replace it at no direct cost to our customers. And so, we have been working on that program for six plus years. We know we have more than half of the lead out of our system.
It has been, as you can imagine, very costly. But the way that we have pursued this and we've been really lucky, I think due to the federal investments that have been made into terms of grants and low interest loans, we're primarily using those dollars to fund this project and others to make sure that we don't have a rate shock for our customers.
So, when we have to borrow, we're utilizing our SRF here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to get lower interest rates and for lead especially, we've been really aggressively going after those grants while they are available and that has been a strategic focus of mine. I think that you talked about a little bit of my background.
I spent a lot of my career looking for federal dollars. So, when this opportunity presented itself, it didn't take long for us to huddle with our finance team and say, “This is something that we really need to pay attention to and compete and go after.” And I feel really proud of our team. I think we're a national model on the lead service line replacement.
At a broader level, within the drinking water system, we have another half a billion dollars’ worth of core system improvements that we're making at our treatment plant and water distribution systems.
So, pump stations, reservoirs, our clear well at our water treatment plant are all here due for either major rehabilitation or replacement. So, in addition to the lead service line work, we're making core system improvements, again, using low interest loans from our state SRF to be able to control for affordability.
And then I would just end by saying, all of that work, I mentioned the expense, there's disruption within the lead service line replacement program. We're in people's homes, we know that we're in their lives in a way that a typical utility isn't.
It all is only successful if you're really intentional about being transparent with the public, being proactive and strategic in the way we communicate and that's I think another potentially unique flavor I bring into the role is thinking about these projects, not just from an engineering perspective.
We all know they need to get done, but we need to bring the public along, so they understand its importance. So, when we inevitably have to increase rates, maybe they have a vague idea of the direction we're headed and the importance of these investments that we're trying to make.
Mahesh Lunani (12:11):
Running a utility at your level, half of it is about community engagement. The other half is the technical part and sometimes we get caught up in the technical part so deep, that you forget that simple communication is important with residents and engaging them, so excellent.
And looks like your federal experience really helped bring a lot of dollars into the city to make this lead service line and the other infrastructure improvements you're looking at or you are in that, in the process of doing it.
So, I want to talk about rates. For many, many decades, the water rates for the most part didn't go along in the same way, in the same direction as, for example, other utility rates have been. And so, there's a lot of catch up going on.
Now in many cities, including yourself, you are raising rates to keep up with this, building this infrastructure for the next 50 years, so to speak, and you raise the rates. So, can you share where this additional capital is moving?
And you talked about half a billion-dollar investments, et cetera. Is it specific programs and projects beyond that that these rates are moving towards or is it all about O&M and keeping up with the operations and OPEX expenditure?
Will Pickering (13:30):
It's a great question and it kind of goes back, take a step back, the history of Pittsburgh Water really. Up until the 1990s, we were the water department of the city of Pittsburgh. So, in the 90s we were spun off as a municipal authority, really more as a financial mechanism to help plug some budget holes at the city level.
So, day one of Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, we took out a bond for a hundred million dollars and that bond was used to give to the city for the pleasure of leasing the assets. So, if you think about even at the 1990s, a lot of our infrastructure was reaching the end of its useful life and we're starting day one, a hundred million dollars in debt.
The organization for a long time, even though on paper had a little bit of independence as a municipal authority and no longer a department within the city, it sort of operated as a department of the city.
I obviously wasn't here, but from hearing from some staff who were here around that time and doing my history, there wasn't a lot of political will for raising rates. It was sort of seen as another tax increase. There's always an election year and no one really likes that. So, rates remained relatively stable.
I mentioned the philosophy was really just fix it as it breaks, do what you can with what you have. Versus trying to take a more longer-term strategic view.
And really just out of necessity, right around the time I joined the organization, the organization and its leaders, including its wonderful board of directors, realized the debt philosophy needed to change and we needed to start making decisions that were in the best interest of the rate payers.
Unfortunately, that meant that we needed to ask more of them. And the debt continues to build because it makes sense to take out longer-term loans for infrastructure projects. Traditionally, we would use 30-year municipal bonds for our infrastructure investments.
However, within the last 8-year or so, the majority of our capital program and about a $1.2 billion, five-year capital program, the majority of that is funded through low interest loans provided through our state SRF.
So, the difference in interest rate, depending on when we would potentially go to the bond market, let's just say 5% right now, for a 30-year bond, we've been able to get 1% loans from the state government.
And we found that to be a huge long-term savings for the organization. Those are dollars that we don't need to ask now and into the future of our rate payers, there are still some projects that don't fit within the bucket of those SRFs.
And we look at either PAYGo financing, so cash financing for some of those capital improvements, and then we would just do traditional municipal bonds for the remainder. But that has really been, we have undoubtedly had to increase rates because we're paying principal and interest on those loans and the loans that we inherited from a generation ago.
But we're really sensitive to the financing to make sure that if there are savings out there through traditional bonds or opportunistic, refinancing, that we're always on the lookout for that because we're never forgetting that we have to ultimately ask our rate payers for more to keep up with our level of spending.
Mahesh Lunani (16:42):
It sounds like moving from a reactive philosophy, which is fixed once it breaks, to a proactive philosophy, you needed money, you need money. And then you went ahead and found the cheapest way you can get the money and save those dollars so that's a great story.
Now anytime you inherit something that's a little messy, which clearly is in this case, one way to clear that air besides being very transparent, is to rebrand. So, the old brand is still no more in the minds, it is a new company, new day, new philosophy, new approach. Is that the motivation behind rebranding? And are there real measurable impacts and improvements you've seen as a result of it?
Will Pickering (17:29):
Yeah, great question, Mahesh. I think some of it remains to be seen. We went live just a few weeks ago with our rebrand, but your point to kind of recreate an identity and disavow yourself of the past was one that several years ago was raised by stakeholders, members of our previous board of directors said, “Have you considered rebranding?”
And to me, at that period of time, we didn't have the track record that I felt comfortable with. So that when we ultimately did go to the rebrand, I wanted it to be clear this wasn't a whitewashing of the past.
That we were working on optics and not the core services that our customers care about. I feel like we're at that point now, which is why we've greenlighted this effort. The organization I mentioned was sort of the water department of the city.
We had an acronym, PWSA, for Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. We sort of changed some elements of our logo to PGH2O. It was pretty apparent; we actually did some surveying of our customers. They were a little confused as to who was what were there multiple utilities, what were people calling us? So, there was a need to unify under one clarified brand.
And we felt that Pittsburgh Water made a lot of sense because as I said at the top, we're responsible for water, sewer, and stormwater. If we're taking that one water approach, it didn't make sense to be Pittsburgh water, sewer, and stormwater. That's even a longer acronym that is confusing for the average customer.
We felt that this brand was … we took elements of the old logo but really wanted to simplify whether we're working on a sewer line in your street, whether we're managing a green infrastructure project to manage storm water or if we're replacing your lead line. We're one water focused as a utility and we're here to serve the city of Pittsburgh in the region.
So, hopefully, we'll talk in a year or so and nobody's using the old name and people feel that we've had that fresh start, but that was our rationale behind that and got to learn a little bit through my experience at DC Water and their rebrand to kind of influence some of the decisions we made here. So, again, trying to pull from those experiences and the great leaders there.
Mahesh Lunani (19:41):
Yeah, no, what I appreciated in your comment here is you weren't doing it for optics. You wanted to make sure there is an authentic delivery machine and service machine that supports the branding, otherwise you’re putting the cart before the horse. And that's very authentic leadership right there.
I want to talk about: the water and climate are interlinked. It depends on what part of this country you are, but even when I say water, it includes wastewater, storm water kind of things. What does resiliency mean for Pittsburgh Water, and how are you preparing to meet these impacts that might come through climate change?
Will Pickering (20:27):
I think one of the most prominent examples during my tenure here at Pittsburgh Water is that particularly in the first few years I was here, we had these very intense localized storms. Sometimes just hitting a single neighborhood and sometimes happening once or twice within a season.
We are a city of really beautiful topography, lots of hillsides, many valleys, some streams that have been paved over and turned into roadways. And so, in some of these neighborhoods, when those microburst storm events happened, we saw a lot of property damage, and its public safety emergencies related to that so we have been focused on trying to address those areas.
One of the challenges we have, Mahesh, is what is the appropriate level of service? Can we design a storm water and sewer system to accommodate those hundred-year storms that seem to be happening three times within a given year?
So, how do we design projects and systems to be able to accommodate that or at least be resilient enough to withstand them? So, from the stormwater where a combined sewer system, primarily about two thirds of our system is a combined sewer system, we're mindful of those risks.
Extreme weather events, Allegheny County, which is the county we're near Pittsburgh, is actually under a drought warning. I'm a Californian and I'm like, “Really? I'm living in Pittsburgh and we're talking about drought? This is crazy.”
Thankfully, the way that the locks and dams are situated here, where we pull our water, we're not all that concerned. But we have to have plans in place to be able to respond almost to any sort of natural disaster, those by mother nature or manmade.
I mean, one of the other things that I'm proud we've built out and we'll continue to grow is our preparedness from manmade disasters. There are a lot of rail lines that travel through our city. We're near highways, our folks are working in risky situations, but the infrastructure, it's been evident even within the state of Pennsylvania that they could be targets for cyber-attacks and other malicious actors. So, we want to make sure that we're also prepared and have the basic security measures in place to be prepared for those.
So, it is sort of a never-ending doomsday list to consider, but we're really working through an intentional planning framework to prioritize those highest risk areas of the system for us to either make new investments or prepare internally through drills and tabletop exercises to make sure we can respond to them.
Mahesh Lunani (23:05):
It's interesting because risk management is such a critical part of the job, because you are constantly trying to get ready for things that are outside your control so you can weather that storm, whether it's cybersecurity or drought or stuff like that, that you don't control with the things you control.
So, you can be robust against it. And it's a hard job, there's no question because you don't know when it's coming, the timing, the intensity of anything, you actually have no idea, right?
Will Pickering (23:36):
That's right. Yeah. It's one of the fun parts of the job, if you want to call it that, that every day is different, and our infrastructure is everywhere. So, if something — when I see clouds in the sky, I’m immediately wondering, “What do storm drains look like? Are they prepared to take on this storm that looks like it's headed that way?” We're just involved in every sort of weather event or manmade event.
Mahesh Lunani (23:59):
The risk is very critical now. We talked about risk, but I want to talk about change. Something I have learned over the last 27 years of my professional experience, change is constant, it's a cliche but actually true.
Even in my role as CEO, I am constantly figuring out how I can get displaced so I can do other things. Every role I do, I'm looking at how I can get displaced so I can train other people to do that job better than I can.
Now, it's operational practices, politics, rates, climate change, people, it’s an ever-changing environment in which you're to operate and I'm personally very intrigued by this. How do you manage change? What's your approach? What can the audience learn? But I would love to learn how you do this.
Will Pickering (24:54):
I will say I am an ever-evolving student on how to execute this. I mean, you hit the point right on the head where it's from all angles, change is inevitable. But we are working in an industry, at least from the utility executive perspective, that is then generally resistant to change.
If you think about our assets, they're buried underground. That allowed a utility like ours to kind of remain unseen for decades on end. People maybe they paid their bill, but we weren't asking for much so it wasn't necessarily impactful.
And one of the constant projects that I'm working on is preparing us to be able to address change, whether it's regulatory change, whether it's we talked about risk in other natural disasters, but also becoming the utility of the future, becoming the utility that our customers expect.
They really should expect no different when they're trying to pay their bill or interact with us in any way than any other utility. I believe we can be just as good if not better than the gas and electric and telecom utilities that are out there.
No one really loves their utility if you ask them, probably. But we think that we can get to the point where people realize that we're protecting public health, and that takes a changed mindset with our workforce. That takes a changed mindset with the way that we communicate with customers and what we're communicating to them about and it is a long effort.
I think it's sort of an ever-present focus. One of the frustrating parts about … I love working in government, but there's a reflex to say, “Well, this is the way we've always done things.” And there is nothing that boils my blood more than that phrase, especially if you're in an organization that everyone agrees needs to improve for then the way you've always done it doesn't work.
So, let's not repeat that and let's think about how we can be different and push the envelope within the context of I mentioned what we're doing is so essential for public health. I can't innovate so creatively that I'm putting any of that at risk.
So, there's certain areas when we think about innovation and we think about really rethinking the utility that may be a little “off limits,” but where I feel we can make the most change is in that customer experience, customer interaction and the delivery of some of our projects, things like that.
You have to have a flexible team; you have to have people who are really interested in learning. It's one of the reasons why I love going to conferences and seminars and I learned this from my mentors- trying to steal every good idea that is out there nationally and who is executing things that in a way that we maybe haven't thought so we can keep and continue to change.
So, by no means an expert on it, I love your idea of kind of putting yourself out of business. I constantly say, “I'm not going to die here in this chair. I want this to be an organization. It’s not about me. And while the buck stops with me as I sit here, we need to be an organization that can function with anyone in this role and continue to improve at a high level.”
Mahesh Lunani (28:04):
Yeah, no status quo is a sign of a car crash as far as I'm concerned. If you maintain status quo, eventually it's going to crash. So, I want to talk about this next topic because when I started this company, there wasn't talk- when we talked about AI, we rolled out AI in a hundred, a hundred plus cities, but AI wasn't a big topic.
Now the world has shifted from BI to AI in a big way. What role do you think digital … and I know you are fundamentally still doing the building blocks, getting that infrastructure lead service lines, but time is not too far away for you to think about the next level. So, what is the role you think digital and AI can play, especially a great amount of real time ops and intelligence, and what are you most excited about in the future in this topic?
Will Pickering (28:54):
Absolutely. I think you're right about the shift. Now, everything is AI. I think you can't buy a cheeseburger without the fast-food restaurant trying to say that AI is involved. A lot of people are co-opting your stuff. But I think what is most exciting for us is the ability to inform our investment decisions.
So, using predictive analytics, business intelligence and AI to whatever degree makes sense, to help us know where the next failure is likely to be, and look at the criticality of that failure and make sure that we're planning to either perform maintenance or replacement on whatever that piece of infrastructure is.
We are in the process of rolling out our asset management system and we're looking to incorporate elements of that. It's not going to happen overnight. But as affordability for our customers remains a concern, we don't want to be replacing things necessarily just because they're old.
If they're old, maybe they're still operating, and they have another decade of life. Where we need to be focused with the rate dollars that we have from the public are where those critical failures are looming.
And so, again, that we're not reactive, that we're proactive and strategic, knowing that there's limited dollars that we have, I think a lot of the traditional mindset is, okay, this is around the end of something's useful life. We better replace it, and we don't have the ability, or at least have it ingrained in our systems to look at current status.
True likelihood of failure before an asset like that is replaced. So, that to me is very exciting to give our team that level of analytics to inform our investment decisions.
Mahesh Lunani (30:36):
We call them machine thinking tools and machine thinking tools supplement and give you all the facts and able to project when it's likely going to fail. In the role you have, CEO, you also have to think about the next decade.
And of course, a lot of decisions you are by definition making long-term but where do you see in the next decade, 10 years ahead, the biggest challenges for Pittsburgh Water and how you're preparing to address them beyond the lead service lines, beyond the infrastructure upgrades et cetera. What's the decade look like?
Will Pickering (31:13):
I think customer affordability is one that I've touched on a bit, but just to address more head on, I think we need to think about rate structures. We have been really progressive and have had a good partner at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to allow us to have some different rate structures depending on income, as well as having cash assistance programs for customers that are having something going on in their life that makes it difficult for them to keep current on their bills.
So, for those services based on income, I think we need to look to try to expand them or at least maintain them and make sure people are aware of them. One of the things that I've realized in this role is a lot of utilities have programs like that, but enrollment stinks. And I don't want to assume the worst of my peers, but sometimes I feel like some of those programs are created to say you have a program.
And one thing that I've been really focused on is getting our team to be proactive to say, “Just having a program isn't enough. What are we doing to meet people where they are, to get them enrolled so that they can have our life essential services and can have them into the future?”
So, I think as we continue to make these massive investments, that concern isn't going away. The regulatory future I think is within the next 10 years we talk about PFAS, we have been largely unscathed with the current regulations here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
But as sort of maybe pretreatment requirements and wastewater requirements come down, that's going to require us to think about PFAS and those emerging contaminants, I think a lot more intentionally could drive treatment decisions, can drive the need for additional monitoring and things like that. So, that to me is a big unknown.
Also, there are things on the horizon that are being discussed as microplastics and I know I run into customers who are frequently asking me, “What else is in the water? Should I be concerned about these microplastics?”
And I don't think the industry has a good answer for them at this point, but I think the customer expectation is that we're going to have to do something about it, just like with PFAS. So, I see that potentially as the next wave and really difficult to say at this point, what that could mean financially or from an infrastructure and treatment perspective for us.
Mahesh Lunani (33:34):
Yes, no, it is microplastics. There's a lot of unknowns about it, a hundred percent. So, as we wrap this discussion up, I mean, you clearly look young Will, and I think you got a long career ahead of you in many different directions. And maybe legacy doesn't set in yet for you, but if you think along that dimension as a legacy, what's the one thing you want to leave behind for the community you serve in this role?
Will Pickering (34:01):
That's a weighty question. I think to be known as a leader that brought people together. I'm very proud of the team we have here, which includes many people who were around when I joined in 2016 that maybe weren't given the opportunity to shine or the resources to excel.
So, if that team can continue without me on the trajectory that we're on, I think that would be a fantastic legacy. If I move on to greener pastures and see this utility continue to succeed and be on the cutting edge of programs and initiatives that matter, I think that would make all of the effort certainly worthwhile.
I think the customer focus that we have here is a legacy that I would really love to see remain because it was just so absent from the organization when I joined it. But again, yeah, just I think having the team that we have here is already for me, something that I'm extremely proud of and hope would continue with or without me.
Mahesh Lunani (35:05):
You moved it from dungeon to the first floor so people can actually understand what it is you do.
Will Pickering (35:09):
I like that.
Mahesh Lunani (35:10):
This is a fascinating conversation, Will. It's clear to me you are a learner, you took on a hot potato nobody wanted to touch, you're focused on some tactical things like lead service line replacements, et cetera, brought your experience and how to raise money in a most cost-efficient way. Federal money.
Really moving from a reactive to proactive philosophy and big advocate for using machine thinking tools, AI to make good and smart decisions and clearly thinking about risk management.
I mean, these are great attributes and also thinking how this organization could be better even if you are not around and move on to things. So, these are all attributes of a fantastic leader as far as I'm concerned. I appreciate you taking the time and I want to thank you so much.
[Music Playing]
Will Pickering (35:58):
Absolutely. It was fun to be here.
Voiceover (36:00):
Join host and Aquasight founder and CEO, Mahesh Lunani for another episode of 21st Century Water. Produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.