Date of Approval: Sept. 24, 2026
Expiration Date: Sept. 24, 2031
Background
A strong, skilled, and resilient workforce is essential to protecting public health, safeguarding the environment, and sustaining water and wastewater services. Sector-wide challenges—including retirements, budget constraints, vacancies, talent competition, evolving skills, and recruitment and retention barriers—pose material risks to service delivery, compliance, and infrastructure performance.
These challenges are growing as the sector faces more complex regulations, aging infrastructure, emerging contaminants, climate and cybersecurity risks, and new treatment, automation, and digital technologies. Infrastructure, innovation, and regulation cannot achieve their goals without sufficient workforce capacity.
The water workforce includes operators, engineers, scientists, maintenance professionals, data and cybersecurity specialists, managers, educators, researchers, communicators, customer service professionals, and others. As the sector evolves, workers will need skills that include system-wide perspectives, digital competency, risk communication, integrated water management, and circular economy options. Meeting these needs will require coordinated policy, funding, education, and public awareness.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly expanding and poised to transform innovation across sectors. Concerns about ethics, social and environmental impacts, accountability, workforce effects, bias, and safety require thoughtful policy guidance. WEF supports ethical and responsible AI use in the water sector to guide strategy, empower the workforce, and strengthen community engagement.
Growing U.S. awareness of skilled trades creates an opportunity to promote water careers. The water workforce is essential, yet barriers such as credential transfer limit mobilizing qualified professionals to locations in need. Utilities should leverage changing attitudes to make a stronger case for reducing barriers.
The Water Environment Federation (WEF) has long supported the water workforce through recruitment, education, training, knowledge-sharing, leadership development, and partnerships. Its federation model enables international cooperation and expert convening, with local and regional support through Member Associations. WEF views water workforce challenges as a systemic risk requiring the same urgency and coordination as infrastructure investment.
Position
The success of protecting public health and the environment depends on a skilled, diverse, and future-ready workforce. WEF calls for coordinated action across the following priorities to ensure safe, affordable, and resilient water services:
- Make Workforce a Core Element of Water Policy and Investment
- Integrate workforce development and succession planning as a required funding component.
- Ensure regulatory and program requirements reflect workforce capacity and implementation realities, especially for small, rural, and resource-constrained utilities.
- Use proven skilled-trade models to strengthen recruitment, education, training, and career pathways, including outreach to high schools and community colleges.
- Expand and Sustain Workforce Funding
- Advocate for sustained public and private funding for water workforce education, upskilling, certifications, apprenticeships, internships, and trainings.
- Make funding mechanisms easy to implement, accessible to utilities of all sizes, responsive to regional workforce needs, and available for entry-level through leadership positions.
- Encourage union-represented utilities to support entry-level apprenticeship programs through collective bargaining agreements.
- Modernize Education, Training, and Credentialing Pathways
- Modernize education, training, and credentialing to reflect evolving skill needs.
- Promote uniform national standards and reduce barriers to transferring licenses and credentials across jurisdictions and states.
- Build flexible apprenticeship, credentialing, certification, and reciprocity pathways.
- Provide multilingual options and translations where possible.
- Advocate for cybersecurity and “human-in-the-loop” practices as AI technologies develop.
- Strengthen Recruitment, Retention, and Workforce Resilience
- Strengthen retention and resilience through competitive compensation, safe conditions, and supportive workplace cultures.
- Adopt workforce planning and succession strategies aligned with long-term asset management and service goals.
- Share success stories on regional collaboration, shared services, and innovative staffing models.
- Engage educational institutions and training partners to elevate awareness of water and wastewater careers, positioning the water sector as an accessible, purpose-driven, and premier career destination for students entering the workforce.
- Advance Fair Access and Broad Participation in Water Careers1
- Expand access to water careers by reducing barriers to entry, advancement, and leadership pathways.Build sustainable talent pipelines through partnerships with educational institutions, workforce organizations, and community groups.
- Promote ethical AI use that respects intellectual property and advance “human-in-the-loop practices.
- Engage and Empower the Water Community
- Strengthen collaboration among utilities, regulators, educators, sector organizations, labor, policymakers, technology providers, consulting firms, and community partners.
- Support professional development, networking, and leadership opportunities.
- Equip professionals to communicate the value of water services and the water workforce to decision-makers and the public.
- Promote voluntary collaboration among utilities of varying sizes and geographies, using training hubs as sources of talent and technical assistance.
Alignment With the Water Environment Federation’s Strategic Goals
Since its founding in 1928, WEF has worked to protect public health and the environment by supporting water professionals and advancing innovative practices. WEF affirms that investing in people first is essential to achieving resilient water systems and a life free of water challenges. This position statement aligns with WEF’s mission and the following WEF Strategic Goals:
- Attract and develop a diverse and passionate water workforce
- Cultivate a purpose-driven community to sustainably solve water challenges for all.
- Lead the transformation to the Circular Water Economy
1 See WEF’s Artificial Intelligence Position Statement, and workforce materials from the Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence