CATALYZING TRUSTING UTILITY AND COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS
Trust between water utilities and their communities increases access to clean, safe, and affordable water services for all. WaterNow and River Network’s Building Blocks of Trust initiative implements best practices for forming trusting utility and community relationships.
Trusting relationships between communities and water utilities are vital to equitable, sustainable, and fiscally sound water systems. There are examples of water utilities and communities from across the country whose high level of trust brought them together to implement green infrastructure, develop needed workforces, and protect sources of drinking water, among other achievements. Based on the experiences and lessons from these successful relationships, WaterNow and River Network created a set of 8 best practices for building trust—the Building Blocks of Trust.
The Building Blocks of Trust initiative operationalizes these best practices, catalyzing trust-based utility and community relationships. The initiative upskills the water sector workforce through in-depth trainings on how to build trust, supports deepened community understanding of utilities’ roles and responsibilities through Community Water Academies, and integrates trust-building with WaterNow’s Project Accelerator.
