Quench California Makes the Case for Infrastructure Investment Locally and Statewide by Dave Eggerton Jan 19, 2024 Voices on Water Water agencies adopting new rate schedules must overcome a challenge familiar to most in the ACWA community. How do you reach customers and explain what makes their water possible? How can you make clear the tremendous financial investment required to maintain the infrastructure behind what so many take for granted? For any agency, this is where successful education and outreach to customers can make all the difference, because when they understand how water infrastructure functions and what that means in terms of cost and their quality of life, they understand the nature of what’s required to keep their water supply safe, secure and reliable. There are very real consequences to how well people understand water infrastructure, and that makes the work of any water agency more effective regardless of the circumstances. Fortunately, ACWA members have a powerful educational resource devoted to creating that understanding — Quench California, our award-winning public education campaign at www.QuenchCA.com. Through the vision of ACWA Immediate Past President Pamela Tobin, the association launched QuenchCA two years ago as a public education campaign to build awareness for the need and benefits of expanding water infrastructure investment. While it’s a statewide campaign, it also has extraordinary potential in providing benefits at the local level. A significant investment by ACWA made QuenchCA possible, and a new partnership opportunity provides member agencies with customized ads targeted to their customers. The agency pays for the ad placement while a public relations firm, hired by ACWA to help lead the campaign, develops digital ads and strategy that will help meet the agency’s individual outreach goals. For example, ACWA member City of Roseville used its partnership to have digital ads developed that highlight the agency’s groundwater banking project. The ads were targeted to zip codes within the city’s service area and ran for two weeks in October, generating approximately 848,559 impressions, or views, and resulting in 286 clicks to a QuenchCA.com website page that highlighted details of the project. More members joining this effort can multiply the campaign’s impact on an exponential scale. When we educate people about local water infrastructure and the vital role it plays in their communities, we help lay the foundational support we need from the public on the critical importance of caring for our infrastructure. On a statewide level, that understanding will be essential to the success of any significant public investment in infrastructure, such as through a water bond. The QuenchCA campaign can also connect you with online toolkit items that allow your agency to customize its message online or through social media. You can learn more about these advanced partnerships, or simply access the campaign’s resources, by contacting your ACWA regional affairs representative or ACWA Director of Communications Heather Engel at heathere@acwa.com. Whether local or statewide, QuenchCA gives the water community an effective way to leverage public awareness of infrastructure within the bigger picture of strengthening the climate resilience of water supplies across California. We know how to build it, but it’s public support for infrastructure investment that will actually put that know-how to work. Be a part of the momentum behind this potential and consider supporting the QuenchCA campaign through an advanced partnership, or by utilizing its many outreach tools.
