Leadership Spotlight: Cynthia Koehler, Executive Director of the WaterNow Alliance
This profile is part of a series of blog posts highlighting prominent members of our Smart Surfaces team. Over the coming months, we will publish interviews with Coalition members as they talk about their work, our environment and the Smart Surfaces mission.
The WaterNow Alliance is a leader in advancing sustainable, localized water strategies, with a particular focus on supporting local leaders to champion innovative policies and solutions. At the helm of WaterNow is Executive Director Cynthia Koehler. Cynthia began her career as an environmental attorney addressing policy issues at the federal and state levels. Her career path shifted about 15 years ago when she was recruited to run for a seat on the board of her local water district in San Francisco, California - which provides water for about 200,000 people.
Cynthia’s work at the local level led her to rethink the traditional approach to water policy, noting “federal and state policy are enormously important, but I realized that leaders like me could use significantly more support in determining what's out there in terms of sustainability, and how we address our affordability and equity issues.” The WaterNow Alliance grew out of the idea that a network of local leaders who were interested in exploring sustainable and equitable solutions could access greater resources collectively, and that a focus on local policies could overcome barriers to ensure increasingly sustainable water management.
Why is local water policy so significant for the implementation of sustainable solutions?
Cynthia’s work with WaterNow recognizes that federal support for water infrastructure has declined dramatically in recent years, and that state and local governments account for 96 percent of spending on water utilities (Rand Corporation). With this in mind, Cynthia notes that “it’s the local leaders and local dollars that decide how standards are met,” and they need to address whether, “we are going to continue to build more traditional infrastructure that is very expensive and challenging to maintain.”
While federal legislation such as the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) set necessary and impactful standards, Cynthia emphasizes that it is local utilities and governments that decide how these standards are met, because “the question now is, how do we integrate traditional infrastructure with new innovative opportunities and strategies to make our water supply, sanitation, and stormwater management more affordable and accessible for everybody? Those decisions are happening on the ground at the local level.”
Since assuming a leadership role in the sphere of local water policy, Cynthia has created opportunities for local decision makers to implement sustainable water solutions. She notes that, “we’re fortunate there’s a lot of wonderful groups, other nonprofit organizations, academics, like the Smart Surfaces Coalition that are all coming at the sustainability challenge from different directions, and we need all of those initiatives.”
For Cynthia, widespread support and expertise are necessary to address the hurdles faced by innovative distributed infrastructure compared to traditional water management practices, having found that “even though we can make the case that strategies are more affordable, equitable, and climate-resilient, it’s a new way of thinking for local utilities.” As a result, part of Cynthia’s work focuses on initiatives to support local utilities in their transition to innovative solutions. These changes include greater system efficiency, greener stormwater infrastructure, and lead service replacements among other improvements. All of these approaches ensure better water quality, improved public health, and greater environmental protections.
Leading Innovative Initiatives to Provide Resources and Effective Solutions
In response to the challenges that traditional water infrastructure poses, Cynthia and WaterNow have focused on a host of initiatives to help shift the current industry. One of these projects is the Tap into Resilience initiative which Cynthia describes as “our umbrella initiative around this concept of distributed infrastructure.” It has several components, one of which is a robust interactive online toolkit that provides utility managers and local leaders guidance and resources to support implementation of new solutions. There are currently over a dozen U.S. cities engaged in this program and investing in scaling localized infrastructure.
A parallel initiative is WaterNow’s Project Accelerator which provides direct support to utilities that need additional resources and expertise to jumpstart innovative projects. Local utilities can apply and receive between 250 and 300 hours of professional support from WaterNow over six months. Cynthia emphasizes that these are communities who have prioritized sustainable and resilient solutions but, “they need someone to get them there, and additional capacity, expertise, or resources. That’s one way of helping move these innovative sustainable solutions out into the world.”
A Case Study of Effective Implementation: The City of New Orleans
As a part of their Project Accelerator program, WaterNow worked with the city of New Orleans beginning in the summer of 2019. Cynthia explained that the city’s engagement with WaterNow was part of a critical cultural and strategic shift within the city’s leadership, because “they’re realizing that the better alternative for their geography is to hold and retain stormwater, and that is likely to significantly reduce the kind of flooding impacts we’ve seen over the last few decades.”
A large portion of the project was reviewing the entirety of the city’s municipal code, and addressing conflicts that arose while considering policies that would replace old infrastructure with greener solutions. For Cynthia, greener solutions constitute a host of innovative options, such as permeable pavements, and “that’s where things overlap with the work that Smart Surfaces is doing, and it's why I think there's so much synergy between [the Smart Surfaces Coalition’s] work and ours. Streets are a huge part of our infrastructure in cities.”
In their work with New Orleans, WaterNow engaged in legal analysis that addressed conflicts in the city’s code and streamlined the engagement of different departments and entities. In doing so, Cynthia explained that WaterNow created a blueprint that, “outlines different ordinances and code changes that are necessary to get the entire city on the same page.” They also initiated a stakeholder engagement process to allow city leaders to better understand the blueprint itself, and the path towards greener and more efficient strategies. Since working with WaterNow, the city of New Orleans has implemented new policies, including the approval of Ordinance 32,933 in May of 2020 which promotes the use of permeable paving and green infrastructure.
Considering the growing challenges that dated infrastructure, water contamination, and climate change pose to communities, Cynthia sees local efforts as a critical component in promoting sustainable and resilient infrastructure: “At the end of the day, water needs to go to businesses, institutions, homes -- and sanitation and stormwater management are all happening at the local level. So, the decisions that local leaders make really do determine a community's water future.”
To learn more about the work mentioned in this interview, visit waternow.org.