Community Organizers
Principle 2
Foster a Strong Partnership with the Water Utility
Build trust, share knowledge, and work side by side to eliminate all communities’ lead service lines.
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Build a meaningful relationship with the water utility
Your water utility is likely leading the effort to replace lead service lines (LSLs). Community organizers can help build residents’ awareness and education about the project by partnering with the utility through outreach efforts and fostering project accountability.
Through intentional and strategic collaboration, community organizers can help the utility better understand local concerns, build trust with residents, and design outreach that meets community needs. This partnership enables more effective communication, faster problem-solving, and greater resident participation, especially in neighborhoods that may be harder to reach.
Build trust and transparency
Building trust and transparency is a shared responsibility. While water utilities are responsible for seeking community input and sharing information (see: Water Utilities’ Roadmap Principle 4), community organizers also play a key role in ensuring that communication is clear and responsive to everyone’s needs.
Some of the ways community organizers can help facilitate trust and transparency are:
Encouraging proactive communication
Help the utility maintain consistent, transparent communication about project schedules, service disruptions, delays, and rate increases to build customer trust. Designate liaisons on both sides to facilitate this ongoing dialogue.
Strengthening accountability
Utilities should demonstrate how community feedback shapes initiatives and share results to build trust. Community organizers must gather this input from underrepresented groups.
Communicating community priorities
Help the utility understand the concerns and priorities of different neighborhoods. Use community feedback from surveys to shape effective outreach strategies and improve program design.
Ensuring inclusive communication
Advocate for outreach materials that are accessible to everyone in your community, including multilingual translations and alternatives for residents without reliable internet access.
Advocating for open data
Push for open data policies to enable the public to easily access information on water quality, service levels, and finances.
Integrating local expertise and lived experiences
Incorporate residents’ lived experiences and local knowledge into planning and decision-making to strengthen trust, improve program responsiveness, and ensure LSL efforts reflect community needs and priorities.
Ensure timely communication
Work with the utility to maintain transparent, respectful, and consistent communication around project progress, particularly during project adjustments, service interruptions, or construction safety and schedules.
Partner with the water utility to inventory and map lead service lines
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR) (2021) mandated that all water utilities submit a lead service line (LSL) inventory by October 2024, categorizing each line as 1) lead, 2) galvanized requiring replacement, 3) non-lead, and 4) unknown. While the deadline has passed, many utilities still need to identify the materials of “unknown” lines, and some missed the deadline entirely.
This data is crucial for two reasons: it identifies LSLs that require replacement and guides the EPA’s allocation of federal funding for lead service line replacement, which could impact your community’s access to resources for replacement work.
By contributing local knowledge and volunteer capacity, community partners can help fill data gaps more quickly, especially in neighborhoods with rentals or older housing where records are missing or unreliable. These partnerships also foster volunteer knowledge and capacity, thereby strengthening community trust in the utility.
Community organizers can help utilities complete and improve their inventories by supporting:
Customer outreach
With guidance from the utility, community volunteers led by community organizers can help identify LSLs through door-to-door outreach, surveys, visual inspections, and resident interviews. This approach is particularly effective in areas with a high percentage of rentals, where landlords and tenants may be unaware of the materials in their pipes or hesitant to engage with municipal authorities.
Data digitization
Inventories can be constructed using historical data, such as original building plans and decades-old construction permits. While these documents ease the burden of direct customer outreach for utilities, they are often handwritten and may be in poor physical condition due to age, wear, or storage conditions. Community members and organizations can help water utilities digitize and organize these materials, easing the burden on staff and accelerating inventory completion.
Strategically support water utility outreach efforts
Community organizers can collaborate with water utilities to enhance outreach and engagement strategies. These joint efforts help build government trust, improve public awareness, and foster a deeper community understanding of the value of the lead service line replacement (LSLR) project. You can strategically support utility outreach by:
- Promoting safety and cooperation at work sites: Partner with the utility to emphasize the safety of utility staff and residents near work zones. This includes resharing the utility’s traffic guidance and maintaining frequent, transparent communication about neighborhood disruptions. Reinforce the message that these brief inconveniences are essential for the safe removal of LSLs and the successful restoration of their neighborhood.
- Directing residents to utilities for authoritative information: Encourage residents to rely on official utility communications and documentation for accurate updates. Reinforce the importance of following instructions and contacting the utility directly with questions, rather than relying solely on social media for information. Utilities often have a dedicated customer service team for the LSL project to manage inquiries.
- Framing messaging to build confidence: Share information clearly, balanced, and factually. Emphasize the steps utilities are taking, reinforce water safety information, and highlight shared goals of protecting public health and improving community well-being.
- Ensure information is community-specific: Work with the utility to tailor messaging for the local population, accounting for potential barriers such as language differences, varying levels of institutional trust, and general accessibility.
Collaborate with the water utility to develop and implement an engagement campaign
Community organizers are crucial to ensuring residents have access to clear, reliable information about water safety and lead service line replacement (LSLR) programs. Collaborating with water utilities, city leaders, and community organizers is instrumental to developing culturally competent campaigns that incorporate community knowledge and reflect community priorities. For example, your organization may have valuable insights into community drinking water use and perceptions of local government. This knowledge can be leveraged to create effective outreach materials on the risks of lead exposure from drinking water and to emphasize the importance of community collaboration in LSLR.
Beyond designing and drafting, get involved in engagement efforts by:
- Conducting direct outreach and participating in community events such as fairs, festivals, community markets, and other gatherings.
- Helping utilities reach households that may be difficult to engage through traditional communication channels, such as door-knocking or placing door hangers.
- Providing translation and interpretation services.
The LSLR process can be complex and lengthy. Providing residents with clear, step-by-step information about what to expect before, during, and after replacement can help community members trust the process and be more receptive to outreach and replacement efforts. Before distributing utility information and materials, partner with the community to review and adapt materials for cultural relevance, accuracy, and impact. If existing materials are inadequate, collaborate with the utility to develop better ones.
Facilitate lasting community-water utility partnerships
Community organizations can play a vital role as a bridge between utilities and their communities by fostering trust, improving communication, and ensuring that residents’ voices are heard and included in decision-making. They can translate complex technical or policy information into clear, accessible language, help utilities understand local concerns, and create opportunities for two-way dialogue through community meetings, surveys, and outreach events. Some of the ways community organizers can leverage their trusted relationships and on-the-ground networks to help utilities reach underserved populations include:
Serving as a trusted connector
Collaborate with utilities to share community insights, raise community concerns and identify barriers, and support inclusive outreach. Community organizers can help utilities reach households most at risk of lead exposure by bringing cultural competence, lived experiences, and trusted networks to the table.
Participating in community advisory committees
Join or help establish community advisory groups that guide decisions on lead service line program implementation and engagement strategies. These committees can work with the utility to ensure that materials are translated, culturally appropriate, and shared through trusted communication channels.
Facilitating community meetings
Bring together utility staff and community through multiple in-person events or meetings where the former can share and get input on project priorities, timelines, budgets, and communications. Community members can share their lived experience and local knowledge about water sources, neighborhood conditions, and historical issues. Help ensure this information is considered alongside technical data to inform outreach strategies, project design, and implementation.
Create water academies
Collaborate with utilities to establish “water academies” or similar initiatives. These programs educate residents on utility operations, fostering the development of informed community advocates. The water academies can develop educational resources, such as webinars or newsletters, to enhance customers’ understanding of water use, conservation, and other local water issues. This approach positions the utility as a valuable community partner and the community organizer as a facilitator. Furthermore, water academies can serve as a recruitment channel for bringing community members into the utility workforce. Greater Cincinnati Water Works established a Citizens Water Academy program that teaches participants about broad drinking water topics and the utility’s enhanced lead program.
Toolbox
Community engagement strategies
Community advisory committees
Key Action 2
Help your water utility access private property
Water utilities often face challenges obtaining permission from property owners, especially landlords or absentee owners, which can delay or prevent lead service line replacement (LSLR) on the private side. Trusted community organizers can help overcome this barrier by educating residents about the importance and benefits of granting access, addressing concerns about costs or property disturbance, and coordinating logistics.
Help collect customer consent forms
In most cases, the only above-ground section of a service line is within the customer’s building (at the water meter). This requires utility staff to obtain right-of-entry authorization, which can be difficult, especially when property owners or residents are reluctant to grant it.
Community organizers can help by:
- Providing clear info on LSL program benefits, resident rights, the need for property access, and the replacement process
- Distributing and explaining right-of-entry and permission documents
- Helping residents complete and return forms to the utility
- Offering a direct customer service contact for resident inquiries
Well-known community organizations may also have higher levels of trust among customers than do utility staff, especially with customers who may face language barriers or concerns about interacting with government employees. Leveraging your organization’s reputation to reach community members can expedite the LSLR process and reduce the project costs associated with repeated door-to-door visits by utility staff.
Advocate for occupant-facilitated entry to replace lead service lines
A central barrier to obtaining right-of-entry authorization is the requirement that the right to authorize entry be reserved only for homeowners, not for current occupants. When the homeowner is unresponsive, even after the minimum required number of attempts to contact them, LSLR projects stall. Community organizers can help empower occupants and tenants to grant right-of-entry authorization, eliminating this setback.
Community organizers can advocate for policy change at several levels. Typically, the legal boundaries of an LSL program are defined in state-level legislation and regulations, so advocacy involves meeting with and sending public comments to state legislators and state agency administrators. However, several municipalities have passed legislation or ordinances that allow occupant authority to grant right-of-entry authorization (see EPIC’s automatic enrollment whitepaper for a table of examples).
Assess the legal landscape in your locality to determine the most appropriate level of government for your advocacy. In addition, work in coalition with water utilities, nonprofit organizations, community leaders, and other community-based organizations to advocate for occupant-facilitated entry.