Mapping the Way Forward for the American Water Sector at AWS 2018

AWS 2018 will address what comes next for the North American water industry, as the financial and infrastructural systems underpinning it are poised to change. Continuing calls for rural utility consolidation, tightening water quality regulations, and private sector lending have demonstrated the ongoing need to address existing vulnerabilities in the region’s water sector.

The event, now in its 9th year, will begin with a pre-conference workshop on October 24, entitled “Accelerating the Digital Utility”. The half-day workshop, chaired by former DC Water General Manager George Hawkins, brings together utility leaders from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia – representing over 70 million customers – to exchange ideas with the summit delegation and discuss how to advance the roll out of digital technologies and services in the water sector.

The main two-day agenda follows on October 25th, with 100 speakers included in the programme. The main agenda will begin with an Opening Plenary featuring Dave Ross, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, David Gadis, CEO and General Manager of DC Water, and Rich Karlgaard, Publisher and Editor-at-Large at Forbes, who will give their outlook on the future of the American water sector.

The agenda will also include three session strands, Finance & Strategy, CTO Forum, and Water Leaders, running over the two days of the conference.

The Finance & Strategy strand will focus on how to navigate the new business and investment models that will define the industry in the years to come, and includes a session chaired by Adam Krantz, CEO of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), on creating a sustainable future financial model for the American water sector. Michael Patella, Senior Policy Advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Kenneth Johnson, Administrator for the Rural Utilities Service of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), will form part of the session’s speaker panel.

The CTO Forum strand meanwhile, will feature speakers from MIT, Veolia, Xylem, SUEZ, Evoqua, CDM Smith and a host of utility leaders, who will be uncovering the opportunities for water technology developers as the sector responds to its greatest challenges.

Additionally, The Leading Utilities of the World, a global network of 32 of the world’s most successful and innovative water and wastewater utilities, will inaugurate several new members at AWS 2018, as part of the conference’s Water Leaders strand.

The Water Leaders sessions will showcase the utility-led innovations from across the USA that are recasting the water sector from the ground up, tackling topics such as the emerging technology needs of utilities, adaptive infrastructure in the face of climate change and cybersecurity attacks, and organisation leadership.

The Summit agenda will also feature 5 hours of dedicated networking sessions, and 23 expert-led roundtables covering a wide variety of topics such as the financial outlook for the US water sector, drought-proofing in California, solutions for Puerto Rico’s utilities, cybersecurity in the water industry, the future of desalination in the USA, stormwater, and new water technologies.

Photographer Edward Burtynsky, renowned for his depictions of industrial landscapes from around the world, has been announced as this year’s guest speaker for the AWS 2018 Gala Dinner, taking place at the end of the first day on the evening of October 25th 2018.

See the full American Water Summit 2018 agenda