Infrastructure
The Binder Walks Out the Door: Plan Operator Succession Before a Midwest Utility Needs It
A national association's new chief executive does not change your town's water, but the change is a useful prompt to check whether your local system could keep running if its own key people left.
Water Finance and Management reported that the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies has selected Dan Hartnett, who has been serving as the association's interim chief executive officer since July, to lead the group on a permanent basis, with the change "effective Nov. 1, 2026." The story is a leadership announcement for a national trade group, and it does not touch the pipes under a Midwest village or the pump at a rural district's well house. Still, it is a reasonable moment for a local reader to ask a plainer question: if the person who runs your water system stopped showing up tomorrow, could anyone else keep it running safely and on schedule?
What a national leadership change does and does not reach
An association's chief executive typically sets the group's priorities, speaks for its members, and manages its own staff and budget. Those decisions can shape the policy conversation around drinking water over time, but they do not issue a permit, change a treatment target, or alter the sampling calendar that a local system must follow. Your utility answers to its state drinking water agency and to whatever rules apply to its size and source, not to the personnel file of a trade group in another city.
That distinction matters because readers sometimes treat any leadership news as a signal that something changed at home. Nothing in the announcement tells a Midwest customer that a rate, a test, or a boil notice is coming. The useful lesson is about process, not about this particular organization.
The knowledge that leaves with a person
Small and mid-sized water systems often depend on one or two people who carry a great deal in their heads. An operator may know which valves are stiff, which well pump has been cycling oddly since spring, which tank needs its inspection on a specific month, and which phone number at the state office answers quickly. None of that is usually written down in a single place. When that person retires, changes jobs, or takes leave, the gap shows up in the first missed deadline rather than in a planning document.
Ask your utility a few direct questions. Where are the operating records kept, and can a second person open them without calling the operator at home? Who holds the current operator certification, and what does the state require when that certification is due for renewal or when the operator changes? Where is the written sampling schedule, and does it list the date, the lab, and the sample location for each test? If the answer to any of these is "in one person's truck," the system has a continuity problem that no leadership announcement can solve.
Where the records should live
The safest arrangement keeps records with the system, not with the individual. Operating logs, maintenance histories, well construction records, lab reports, and the sampling calendar belong in a location the board controls, whether that is a shared drive, a locked cabinet at the water office, or a binder that the clerk and a second operator can both reach. Digital copies help, but they only work if someone knows the password and has tested the login recently.
Cross-training matters as much as storage. A second person who has watched a full monthly routine, walked the system, and handled at least one routine sample collection is far more useful than a shelf of documents nobody has opened. Many smaller systems arrange this through a neighboring utility or a regional operator group, and some state agencies offer technical assistance that can help a board identify the gaps. Check what your state offers before assuming it is unavailable.
A short checklist for a town board or water district
Start with a simple inventory. List every recurring task the system performs, from daily checks to annual reports, and note who does each one and where the instructions are kept. Mark any task that only one person can perform. Then set a date to have a second person complete one of those tasks under supervision, and record that it happened.
Next, confirm the outside contacts. Keep the name and phone number of your state drinking water office, your certified lab, your equipment vendor, and any neighboring system that has agreed to help in an emergency. Make sure at least two board members know where that list lives.
Finally, schedule a review after any change in staffing, not only after a crisis. The board does not need to predict who will leave. It needs to make sure the water keeps moving when someone does. A trade group's new chief executive is a reminder of how ordinary leadership change is, and how much depends on whether a system has built its knowledge into its own structure rather than into one set of hands.