Arizona water professionals protect, manage, and deliver an essential service
By AMWUA Staff
Our way of living relies heavily upon the availability and reliability of clean water. The reality is that without water, we cannot survive, much less thrive. And ensuring we have access to safe and secure water every day would be impossible without a dedicated and diverse team of water professionals.
Providing water to more than half of the State’s population is no small feat. The ten AMWUA cities employ more than 2,500 water professionals, all of whom play a critical role in delivering water to your tap, providing essential wastewater services, and ensuring water operations run seamlessly. This includes collectively operating and maintaining 30 water treatment plants and over 1 million water meters, ensuring 142,000 fire hydrants are ready for emergencies, and constructing, maintaining, and upgrading over 18,000 miles of water lines as needed.
The front-line workers who run the treatment systems, and maintain and repair water lines, play a pivotal part in every water utility. Additionally, it takes engineers, hydrologists, biologists, and experts in water policy, economics, business administration, law, environmental sciences, conservation, and communications. This diverse group collaborates and coordinates to ensure water is delivered to our homes, neighborhoods, businesses, schools, high-tech manufacturing, health facilities, and other services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It’s easy to see why water professionals are essential to every single community. We are grateful for their dedication every day of the year because, without the team of water experts, the reliability and safety of our water would not exist. That is why AMWUA is pleased to support the fourth annual Arizona Water Professionals Appreciation Week from May 8-12. This recognition week was initiated to acknowledge water professionals’ role in clean and sustainable water supplies, draw attention to career opportunities in the water industry, and increase awareness of Arizona’s unique water resources. This is an important effort to show appreciation to all the staff dedicated to water and wastewater services.
While we always recognize the valuable role they play, we give extra thanks to these essential water workers this week as we salute the service they provide and recognize the efforts of all the men and women of water, their commitment, passion, and dedication. We hope you will do the same.
Become a water professional
When you work in water, you don’t just enjoy a good, stable job with dependable benefits. You get excellent training, a challenging job environment, and the satisfaction of knowing you directly benefit your community to ensure a good quality of life for the present and future generations. By choosing to work in water, you will embark on a rewarding, innovative, and challenging career that has a lasting impact on public health, the environment, and a thriving economy. Visit your local water utility’s website or the AZ Water Association for current opportunities to become an Arizona Water Professional and join a diverse team that works together to protect our most valuable resource.
The AZ Water Association will host their 96th Annual Conference and Exhibition during Arizona Water Professionals Appreciation Week, a three-day program designed to provide professional development, continuing education, and technology transfer to support its vision of “a vibrant Arizona through safe, reliable water.” The association, representing 2,700 water/wastewater professionals across the State, is dedicated to preserving and enhancing Arizona’s water environment. Their members include operators, engineers, scientists, technicians, and public and private water utilities managers. Members come from small community utilities with as few as two employees and big-city systems with hundreds, such as the AMWUA cities. All are key team members in the water world and highlight the diversity needed to deliver every drop of water we use.
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For over 50 years, Arizona Municipal Water Users Association has worked to protect our member cities’ ability to provide assured, safe, and sustainable water supplies to their communities. For more information, visit www.amwua.org.
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