Introduction to New Jersey Future's webinar on communications strategies for water and sewer utilities, including a look at the dire need for new investment in New Jersey's urban water infrastructure and why that means utilities will have to communicate differently.
4. Agenda
• Introduction: Why Change?
– Elaine Clisham, New Jersey Future
• Case Study: What we do, and how we do it
– Rick Dovey, Atlantic County Utilities Authority
• Case Study: Building a Communications Strategy
– Tiffany Ledesma, Philadelphia Water
• Making the Media Your Friend
– Elizabeth Ruebman, Amplify, Inc.
• Questions
10. Profile of New Jersey CSO Cities
• Most are “small” – 60,000
residents or fewer
• All are older, with very old
infrastructure
• Many are distressed, with
large numbers of residents
earning well below the
statewide median income
• Many have declining property
tax bases, making it difficult to
find ways to finance
infrastructure upgrades that
won’t burden residents
• Most have begun to grow
again!
14. THANK YOU!
We will email all participants with links to the webinar and the
presentations as soon as they’re available.
GET IN TOUCH
Chris Sturm, Senior Director of State Policy
609-393-0008 ext. 114 or csturm@njfuture.org
Jane Rosenblatt, Planning and Policy Associate
609-393-0008 ext. 110 or jrosenblatt@njfuture.org
RESOURCES
http://njfuture.org/water
Editor's Notes
Good afternoon – let’s get started.
RECORD
Introduce/Welcome
About us
What happens in New Jersey’s cities is of great concern to us, and as I’ll explain later, we are heavily involved in working with cities to take advantage of opportunities to upgrade water infrastructure.
Rough idea of how the next hour is going to go. We are recording this, so it will be online for you to refer back to.
Speaker bios are on the event page on our website; they will introduce themselves more fully at the beginning of their portions.
Questions via chat – please submit at any time, and we’ll take as many of them as possible at the end
Pop-up windows are movable
Most customers take us for granted!
Not true of everyone, but for many of us, we talk to our customers only when:
We raise rates
They have billing problems
There are service problems
Current environment:
Distrust of government
Broken faith – rates keep going up, things don’t get any better
Perception that the water system works OK; why fix if it isn’t broken?
Growing trend toward wanting things without paying for them
Ignorance of what is involved in delivering clean water, removing wastewater
American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card
Facing Our Future report on needs and costs -- $9.3 billion for combined-sewer overflows alone
Behind the rest of the country on CSO remediation:
859 cities nationwide have or had CSO systems
775 have addressed their CSO problems;
84 have yet to do so; 21 of those cities are in New Jersey
New DEP permits require action; estimated cost: $4 – 13 billion
Who we are
State’s land-use watchdog: Where and how should we grow?
Why we’re involved
New Jersey’s future growth will take place in its cities; the health of the cities determines the health of the state
Very diverse set of people and organizations have a stake in this issue; we bring them all to the same table
What we’ve done
Grant to work with cities on taking advantage of this opportunity
Ripple Effects, other reports
Convened thought leaders from broad cross-section of perspectives
Agenda for Change – including education on things like communication; this webinar is part of that
Newsletter; sign up on our urban water resources page
http://njfuture.org/water
Thanks for attending; HUGE thanks to speakers
Webinar link will be emailed