This project aims to trigger a basin-wide shift in how wastewater utilities are managed, budgeted, and led—unlocking an often-overlooked lever for clean water improvement. The team will empower more than 25 small and mid-sized utilities within the Great Lakes Basin to strengthen their organizational systems, such as leadership, management, budgeting, and staffing, in ways that generate cost savings and improve operations. Those operational savings will then be reinvested into clean water projects, creating a self-sustaining cycle of ecological and financial gains using the resources utilities already have.  

Great Lakes PRESERVE, a network formed through a previous Fund-supported project, will develop, implement, and integrate a new Utility Performance Management (UPM) model. UPM is a suite of practices that improves a utility’s capital budgeting, operations, personnel management, leadership, and outreach strategies to help wastewater utilities improve and innovate. The network will extend its reach and emphasize social infrastructure and peer exchange. A UPM Knowledge Hub on the PRESERVE website, a UPM Replication Playbook, and case studies documenting lessons learned will be resources for utilities. The team will work with other network organizations to embed the UPM model in conferences and technical service offerings across the region to drive UPM growth.  

Participating utilities will launch at least 15 high-impact projects. Over the long term, this peer-led model will be integrated into professional societies and technical assistance programs, ultimately expanding to more communities and reducing combined sewer overflows by up to a billion gallons, reducing phosphorus loading by 500,000 to 2 million pounds, and saving the region billions of dollars in avoided infrastructure costs.