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Business Advisory Council

The Clean Water America Alliance’s Business Advisory Council (BAC) provides a forum for forward-thinking private-sector leaders, including business and industry, to discuss, promote, and explore innovative solutions to water sustainability challenges. BAC membership provides an opportunity to stay up-to-date with the latest Alliance activities on issues relevant to business, as well as keep a connection to the most recent happenings within the water policy arena.

The BAC is chaired by Steve Maxwell, Managing Director of TechKNOWLEDGEy Strategic Group. The philosophical premise of the BAC is that only by promoting a broad range of means by which private and public agencies can work together, can we even begin to address our looming water quality, quantity and infrastructural challenges.

There is a plethora of challenges and potential economic opportunities around water, in which the business community can and should take a much more active role. However, given the general perspective of the BAC, and in an effort to achieve real and measurable progress in a few specific policy and educational issues, the Council would initially focus on just three key areas, and would develop very discreet and specific deliverables or outcomes:
 

Key Focus Areas

Promoting Public-Private Partnerships to Solve Water Challeneges

One of the most contentious but least productive debates or controversies in today’s domestic water market revolves around the proper role of private capital and private industry in the solution of water problems. The BAC believes that, in many cases, public agencies may be best suited to provide the water and wastewater treatment needs of a specific geographic area. However, in other cases, private firms may be better positioned to provide such services. The BAC is committed to exploring and promoting (and better explaining to the general public) the advantages of the full spectrum of combined public-private approaches to the provision of clean water – from purely public to purely private, and with a focus on the full range and diversity of combined approaches between these two extremes. The BAC believes that only by developing and promoting new types of public-private partnerships, and helping to promote the advantages and broader public acceptance of new and creative financing mechanisms and operating approaches, will we be able to successfully resolve many of our thornier clean water problems in the future.
 

Advancing New Water Technologies and Regulatory Innovations

Another counter-productive and often debilitating characteristic of the U.S. water market for many private businesses is the glacial pace at which new and innovative technologies are accepted into the marketplace. Part of this reflects the conservative nature of the industry, but it is also partly a result of overly-complex regulations and approval processes which tend to work against quick acceptance or certification of promising new technologies. New technology will not solve all our water problems, but it can certainly help – and the BAC believes that government and regulatory agencies should actively promote new technology, not act in such a way as to impede it. As such, the BAC will work to identify specific regulations and approval processes which could be streamlined, and will work with EPA and other regulatory agencies to develop a more rapid and results-oriented process for new technology evaluation and approval.

Closely connected to technology innovation is regulatory innovation – exploring and deploying new environmental management and compliance strategies to get encourage better environmental practices. Private as well as public sector entrepreneurs have experience in changing regulatory approaches to adapt to evolving market or economic conditions. The BAC is uniquely positioned to add its voice to the broader chorus of voices in the Clean Water America Alliance so that regulators, enforcement officials, and policymakers embrace watershed-based, results-oriented strategies such as nutrient trading and wetland banking.
 

Promoting and Increasing Awareness of Cost-Based Water Pricing Practices

The cry for more effective cost-based systems for pricing water is being heard more loudly and widely in recent years. The broader public is becoming more aware of water quality and quantity problems, and is increasingly realizing that water is not – nor should it be – essentially free. However, we still have a long ways to go in terms of appropriately pricing water – in a manner that will insure sustainable supply over the long term. So many of the problems we face in water – waste and inefficient conservation, inadequate recycling and reuse, poor allocation amongst competing uses, and so on – would quickly be addressed and would start to be resolved if water was simply more accurately priced at its true all-in cost. The BAC will endeavor to support and energize this growing demand for more effective and realistic long-term pricing systems for water – by exposing the effects of inefficient or subsidized pricing, and by promoting the long-term advantages of truly sustainable and cost-based pricing of water.

Charter members of the BAC will cooperatively discuss, research, debate, recommend and author various position papers and summary reports, as well as engage in a series of discussions and group forums during 2011 and 2012. On each of these three topics, the Council will develop brief background summary documents outlining the general issue or problem to be addressed, the historical context, and the pros and cons of different approaches to the issue, alternative viewpoints or considerations around the key issue, and a set of recommended public and private approaches and initiatives going forward – from the perspective of the commercial water industry. These summary documents or position papers will be directly utilized – in a variety of manners and settings – to educate and influence key political leaders and policy makers at both the Federal and regional level.


 

Member Benefits

BAC membership ensures you will have regular interaction with the Alliance through mailings, briefings on “hot topics,” invitations to events, and participation in regular BAC meetings. In addition to influencing industry trends and policy changes, members of the Council reap significant benefits that include:

  • Partnering with key sector players such as agriculture, energy, non-profit organizations, and others who contribute to the establishment of significant viable water management practices.
  • Gaining exclusive access to stakeholder groups that only the Clean Water America Alliance can bring together in order to better break down sector lines and effectively address the unique needs associated with the management of our nation’s water resources.
  • Serving as a sounding board for the Clean Water America Alliance’s Board of Directors.
  • Showcasing technology innovations and solutions to meet 21st century water sustainability challenges.
  • Securing increased public visibility and recognition of industry actions for achieving water sustainability and stewardship. The Council will seek to provide credibility, generate visibility, and establish a national presence for the water sustainability programs and activities of responsible companies and industry groups.
  • Improving relationships with key stakeholders.
  • Gaining knowledge of cutting-edge and timely clean water topics such as green infrastructure, water reuse, the energy-water nexus, and climate change.
  • Learning about best practices and practical solutions to better address water sustainability, water efficiency, and water resource management issues.
     

Council Membership

For membership information and rates, please contact Kristyn Abhold, at 202-533-1821 or kabhold@cwaa.us. 
 

Membership Requirements

We request that members in the Alliance’s BAC:

  1. Join the Alliance as an annual member.
  2. Participate in BAC meetings / conference calls.
  3. State their commitment to the Alliance’s mission in achieving national water sustainability. (We can work with companies to interpret how best to achieve this requirement).
  4. Review the Alliance’s BAC status at least once per year, and provide feedback that can help us increase the effectiveness of our collaboration.