And joining me now is Cheryl Norton, executive vice president and chief operating officer at American Water.
You saw her on that bell podium earlier.
Cheryl, welcome.
Thank you, Kristen.
Yes, great to have you here at the New York Stock Exchange today.
What was it like to ring the bell on this big day?
It was so exciting.
We were just thrilled to be there.
I had my whole team there and it was an amazing experience.
What does World Water Day mean to you?
World Water Day is so important.
It's celebrated.
It was created by the UN to really talk about.
The lack of water across the globe.
There are about 2 billion people across the globe that don't have access to clean, safe water.
And so it's really important to us as a water utility.
We try to provide clean, safe water to as many people as we can across the US.
And am I reading this correctly?
It is your 140th anniversary.
That's correct.
And 140 years of providing solutions to the communities that we serve just makes me so proud.
Wow.
In terms of what you've seen evolve over the past 140 years, what stands out to you?
You know, it's been watching the industry evolve.
When, when I first came to the industry, there were hardly any women in the industry, for one, but we've made so many investments across the systems because the systems are failing.
The American Society of Civil Engineers have given us a report card, and for the water industry in general, they gave them a and a D+ for wastewater, so the infrastruc.
Instructure needs a lot of investment and it's only getting worse and so for me it's really important that utilities across the organ the footprint of the US continue to make those significant investments and you know we invest billions of dollars each year, more than $3.5 billion this year, um, to make sure that our infrastructure is sound and good and sustainable.
Are the specific infrastructure changes that need to happen to improve this?
I mean, scores of C and D doesn't really get much worse than that, right?
Yes, it's the infrastructure changes that need to happen is that there needs to be routine, planned, proactive investments instead of just reacting to what's happening.
So when a system has a main break or you have a sewer issue in a system, you don't want to have to react to that.
It's a A lot more costly to fix those, to repair those than it would be to proactively invest.
And so we're always trying to look ahead and prioritize where we think we could have the next failure and get ahead of that so that we can do it more efficiently and also make sure that our customers have the service that they deserve.
Yes, talk to me more about your customer base and how an average consumer watching this show would see this play out.
You know, a consumer that doesn't have good, strong infrastructure might wake up one morning and not have water.
They may struggle to get to work each day if they have main breaks that shut down roads and things like that.
But if you have a system that's got strong infrastructure, it impacts all the infrastructure across that system.
So it's the roads, it's your ability to go to work, it's your ability to eat at a restaurant or cook at your house.
And we want to make sure that our customers don't have those disruptions to their daily lives.
And if they do, we want to make sure that we take care of that as quickly as possible.
Yes, 140 years is a lot to celebrate.
You've been doing this for decades as well, is that right?
I have been, yes, I've been in the industry about 40 years.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
What does the future look like to you?
The future looks like to me more growth across the business.
It's such a fragment.
Industry there are about 53,000 water utilities across the US and so that's not a very efficient way to do business.
So I see more regionalization, more growth for our company across the US, but I also see the regulations continue to evolve and that makes it more and more challenging for utilities to make sure that we're providing clean, safe water.
So more research will have.
And I think more investments on the treatment side, and I just think it's going to continue to evolve and it's going to take a high level of expertise, which is exactly what we bring to the table.
I'm so proud of the team that I have that has such extensive expertise.
It's what we do and so we focus only on water and wastewater and we're really excited about that.
Cheryl, congratulations again.
Thank you so much for joining us.
