At WEFTEC^® 2018 in New Orleans, Jenny Hartfelder, WEF immediate past president, relaunched WEF’s Water’s Worth It^® campaign. This was welcome news to many members and WEF Member Associations (MAs) who had grown to truly identify with that message. So, it’s worth repeating: water’s worth it!

This message resonates with so many of us because it is more than just a campaign. It is more than a slogan. It is our rallying cry, our raison d’être, or reason for being. We get up every day and go to work, and we volunteer our time to WEF and MAs because water’s worth it.

At its core, this broad-based messaging campaign helps bring attention to the importance of clean water and the infrastructure that supports it as well as the essential work of water professionals. It reveals how our actions, attitudes, and the things we most value are so closely connected with water. Read more about this People–Water Nexus in my October column, “From the President: Activating the People–Water Nexus.”

The goal of the Water’s Worth It campaign is to have the public make a connection between the essential services water professionals provide every day and the things it values most:

• health and safety,
• a clean environment,
• a strong economy,
• stable job growth, and
• quality of life.

The campaign is built on five pillars that explain the “why” of Water’s Worth It:

• our respect,
• our effort,
• our passion,
• our health, and
• our future.

Together, the five pillars justify how water is a precious, limited resource that needs our care. WEF created a colorful website that describes each of the five pillars in detail and provides fact sheets and messaging materials that you can download and use at your organization or MA. Find these resources at www.watersworthit.org.

Read the entire column in the December issue of WEF Highlights