Behind the Tap: Episode 1

Kathy: Hello and welcome to the first episode of Prince William Water’s podcast, Behind the Tap. One of the first things I learned as a Prince William Water employee is that delivering drinking water and reclaiming wastewater for more than 380,000 people in Prince William County is a complicated process. So, we'll be dropping new episodes of this podcast quarterly to share information about your drinking water and wastewater services and bring insight into the value of water as one of our planet's most important resources. Each episode will include a member of the Prince William Water team to discuss current topics and answer some questions we receive from our customers. Today, our guest is Ari Nelson, our Deputy General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer. She has been with Prince William Water for over 20 years. Ari, thank you so much for being here on our first episode.  

Ari: Thank you, Kathy, and thank you for creating this podcast to hear directly from our employees.  

Kathy: So, my first question is, Imagine a Day Without Water. That's a national program that we take part in every year. Why do we take part and what's it about?  

Ari: So, we need water to live and we need water to have a good quality of life. Imagine a Day Without Water is an opportunity to remind ourselves of the value of water.  

Kathy: I'm a customer or community member. What might be the impact if there was a day without water?  

Ari: So, your average American family uses about 300 gallons of water per day. If you think of one day without a single drop of water, that's waking up in the morning, not having a shower, not being able to brush your teeth, not being able to flush the toilet, prepare your food. That can be a very disruptive to what our daily lives are.  

Kathy: Yeah. We don't want to start the day without that first cup of coffee or tea either. So what about businesses? How might they be affected?  

Ari: Well, you've got fire departments, schools, hospitals. All businesses also need water to support the community.  

Kathy: So if I hear you, what Imagine a Day Without Water is, is focusing on the fact that water is essential to daily life and also, to our quality of life.  

Ari: That's right. The message is we cannot take clean, quality, reliable water for granted.  

Kathy: So, as the water and wastewater utility for most of Prince William County, how does Prince William Water help to make sure we don't have a day without water?  

Ari: Sure. Business continuity has a lot of components to it. Ensuring high water quality to protect public health is number one. Properly maintaining your water and sewer infrastructure is number two, and emergency preparedness is the last one. All of those require a skilled and dedicated workforce.  

Kathy: I'm going to go data nerd on you for a second. One of the things that we talk about a lot in Prince William Water and take great pride in is our 99.999% reliability. If I'm not a data nerd, what does that mean?  

Ari: 99.999% reliability means that the average customer is out of service less than 2 minutes per customer annually. Which means you need to respond promptly to emergencies. And more simply put, we want our customers to be able to turn that tap and they don't have to think twice about getting their water.  

Kathy: One of the other things I heard you say is really important is maintaining our assets, our infrastructure. If I'm not familiar with a water utility, I might not understand what are some examples of the infrastructure that we have to do to keep the water running.  

Ari: Sure. Water utilities are capital intensive. So, Prince William Water maintains over $1.2 billion in assets. That's everything from water storage tanks to pumping stations to a water reclamation facility and most of our assets are actually underground. We have over 2,500 miles of water and sewer lines and actually if you put those end to end it would take you all the way to Las Vegas. So that's a lot of infrastructure to take care of.  

Kathy: It is indeed. So, you've talked about what Prince William Water does to help us stay in water. As an individual customer or community member, what are some things I might be able to do to protect our water resources?  

Ari: Sure. We always want to be mindful of how we're using water. So, we would want to make sure that we fix our leaks promptly, that we don't let those go by the wayside or go on for too long, and we don't want to be wasteful. We have a lot of wise water use tips for landscaping online. And on the sewer side, you want to make sure fats, oils, and grease never go down the drain. Those can create backups not only in your home but out in the community. And you never ever want to flush wipes even if they say flushable on the container.  

Kathy: So that that's a misnomer.  

Ari: That's right.  

Kathy: One other thing I've heard you talk about too is in wintertime about folks being Salt Smart. What does that mean? How does that protect our water?  

Ari: You want to be mindful of how much salt you're using and where you're placing the salt as the runoff can reach our waterways.  

Kathy: This has been a great conversation about the value of water and imagining a day without water resources. Now I want to switch gears a little bit. We get questions all the time from customers when our employees are out in the community or through our customer service department. One of the ones we hear a lot is, "Is Prince William Water part of Prince William County government and how is it funded?"  

Ari: So, we serve the same community, but we are actually two separate entities. The Board of County Supervisors created Prince William Water in 1983. Prior to that there were multiple service districts all with different customer service levels and different rates and fees and so consolidating them into one created a standard for all customers. Being an authority means that we are fully funded by our rates and fees. So existing customers, they pay for existing operations and our system and developers fully fund and pay for expansion of the system.  

Kathy: Great. That is very helpful. I have one last question for you. As I mentioned earlier, I know you've been here for over 20 years, and you've had a variety of roles while you've been here. If there were one thing that you wish people knew about Prince William Water, what would that be?  

Ari: First, there's such a variety of careers here from trade positions to administrative positions. It really runs the gamut and our employees that work here are really mission focused. So, we're all doing something to serve the community. Which gives us a great sense of pride. I would also say how engaged we are in the community. So, our outreach, some folks may be surprised to know that our programs reach over 12,000 students, in Prince William County schools every year, and we also participate in several hundred community events to help promote education and awareness as well.  

Kathy: Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, especially on our first episode of Behind the Tap.  

Ari: Thank you, Kathy.  

Kathy: We appreciate you're watching our first episode of Behind the Tap. We'll be dropping the next episode in January, so be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss an episode. You can also find our podcast on our website. We look forward to seeing you next time here on Behind the Tap.