Work Products

Served as an Environmental Justice expert for the Can Manufacturers Institute for a proposed bill designed to create convenient, equitable redemption options for metal can recycling. Contributions to this collaborative project included highlighting shortcomings in our current understanding of the demographics of can recyclers and identifying legislative and socio-behavioral pathways to normalize can recycling across all sections of the society.

The STEM workforce has long had underrepresentation of women, BIPOC workers, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and other underserved groups. Equity is key to attracting and retaining a diverse workforce. This landscape review helped W+E Forward, an NSF-funded Regional Resiliency Engine, understand how to embed Diversity & Inclusion into all its foundational components and develop a framework to inform the development of a plan to achieve Inclusion at All Levels.

Led an assessment of the water sector challenges and opportunities to help a large Foundation plan its project related investments in the water sector. The assessment was based on more than 100 in-person and virtual/phone interviews with water sector experts and three regional roundtables, resulting in the Foundation planning/making major investments in water nonprofits, tech startups, and community lending institutions.

State Revolving Funds are the largest intergovernmental transfer from the federal government to state and local agencies for water infrastructure. Led a project to comprehensively analyze the role and impact of SRFs on drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure in the country. Findings included unspent funds in several state programs, poor distribution to small and minority communities, little to no emphasis on natural/green infrastructure solutions, and inability to leverage federal funds on the municipal bond market.

A few large water systems have set up bill assistance programs to help customers struggling to pay their bills. This project reviewed water bill assistance programs offered by 20 of the largest drinking water utilities. The analysis concluded that the programs are rarely designed with the end user in mind: they often exclude renters, have onerous documentation requirements, require yearly enrollments, and have poor enrollment rates. The report received wider coverage through op-eds and earned media.

Smaller water systems struggle to maintain compliance, train and retain staff, and afford large capital expense as well as regular maintenance. Consolidation of systems is a potential opportunity to bring down costs and provide reliable and affordable service to customers. Water systems have been consolidating, but the pace is not quick enough. This project resulted in a dashboard on water system consolidation and analyzed EPA database to identify trends in changes to the governance structure of water systems.

Building on the success of the 2020 Water Data Prize, this project engaged Raftelis Financial Consultants and a group of advisors to develop a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) template to be made available to small and mid-sized water utilities, and focused upon building public trust, essential for a water utility to be financially resilient. This project resulted in an invitation to join U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) working group to develop recommendations for revisions to the CCR Rule.

Led a review of USDA’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program by analyzing the impact on water quality in six Midwestern watersheds and concluded that current conservation efforts were yielding relatively modest benefits. Hydrologic modeling on those watersheds suggested that Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and sediment contamination would be higher by 2050 based on climate trends and conservation programs would have to be significantly scaled up to bring them under control.