WLI 2025 Final Project: Planning for the Unpredictable: Event and Crisis Leadership in the Water Sector

Each year the final project is a major part of the Water Leadership Institute. The WLI 2025 cohorts wrote articles on turning challenges into strengths through resilient leadership.

In the water utility sector, crisis leadership is not optional—it’s fundamental. For organizations responsible for delivering safe, reliable water, leadership during disruption determines whether systems collapse or recover with resilience. This responsibility does not rest with a single individual. It must be embedded in utility leadership teams and organizational culture, ensuring every level of the workforce is prepared to anticipate, respond, and adapt.

What Utilities Prepare For – and How

Water utilities face an expanding range of threats: extreme weather events, infrastructure failures, and cyberattacks that can disrupt essential services. While utilities cannot prevent all crises, they can prepare for them. Structured frameworks like the National Incident Management System (NIMS) provide a backbone for coordinated response across jurisdictions. The American Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) further requires utilities to assess risks, prepare emergency response plans, and build resilience into daily operations.

But frameworks and regulations are only the starting point. Their effectiveness depends on how leaders apply them—turning static documents into living systems that shape decisions in real time. Without strong leadership, response plans risk becoming mechanical at best and chaotic at worst.

Leadership in Action: Real-World Lessons

What separates successful responses from failed ones is leadership. The following examples highlight how each core skill can determine outcomes in a crisis:

• Decisiveness: After Hurricane Katrina, some wastewater utilities restored service quickly by activating pre-established mutual aid agreements. Leaders who made rapid, clear decisions enabled faster recovery, while others stalled and lost critical time.
• Communication: In the Flint water crisis, the breakdown was not only technical but also communicative. Leaders delayed transparency, eroding public trust. By contrast, utilities that provide timely, clear updates during contamination scares maintain credibility even under pressure.
• Collaboration: Western North Carolina’s repeated floods highlight the value of coordination. Utilities that trained alongside emergency services and built continuity plans restored services far faster than those acting alone.
• Awareness: The Oldsmar, Florida, cyberattack was neutralized because staff noticed abnormal chemical dosing in real time. Vigilance and situational awareness transformed what could have been a public health disaster into a success story.
• Trust and Empowerment: Mutual aid works only when utilities trust each other and empower local teams to act. Katrina highlighted this divide: utilities with empowered staff adapted, while those reliant on top-down control faltered.
• Continuity: Recovery is not just “getting back online.” It’s ensuring that planning, training, and exercises position utilities to build back stronger. AWIA and Homeland Security’s resilience requirements reinforce this expectation.

These examples show that the “Seven Core Skills of Crisis Leadership”—decisiveness, communication, collaboration, awareness, trust, empowerment, and continuity—are not abstract ideals. They are tested daily in the field and separate effective responses from failed ones.

A Call to Action: Embedding Leadership into Utility Resilience

Utilities already spend millions on infrastructure upgrades. But pumps and pipelines cannot lead through a flood, cyberattack, or contamination event. People do. The real question is not whether utilities will face another crisis, but whether leaders and teams will be ready when it happens.

To prepare, utilities should:

• Invest in leadership training with the same regularity as infrastructure maintenance.
• Integrate frameworks like NIMS and AWIA requirements into daily culture—not just as checklists, but as living systems shaped by empowered leadership.
• Develop continuity and emergency response plans that are exercised, tested, and improved through lessons learned.

Effective leadership ensures resilience, protects public health, and sustains trust. In the water sector, the next crisis is not a matter of if, but when—and leadership will make all the difference.

Authors: Bethel Abate, Miguel Sibayan, Tammy West, Steve Mosley, Annie Cashon, Andrew Brocato, Courtney Thomas