As water supply concerns mount with the worsening impacts of climate change, water providers face a growing imperative: invest in resilience to ensure sustainability.
Such solutions — everything from efficient treatment processes and water reuse programs to effective leak detection enhancements and asset management — create system resiliency and are good for business, delivering cost savings over time while ensuring the investment is beneficial to the ratepayer and the utility alike. Resource stewardship generates public trust and goodwill, and investing in sustainable infrastructure enhances resilience to extreme weather or water scarcity, providing ample benefits across the board.
As a practical matter, Black & Veatch defines “sustainable infrastructure” as ensuring that the world’s power, water and other human critical infrastructure is reliable, resilient, responsible, affordable and secure.
According to participants in the Black & Veatch 2025 Water Report survey of 680 stakeholders in the U.S. water sector, sustainability planning continues to be a core focus, with 78% of them indicating that either their utility or the municipality, and often both, have a sustainability plan (Figure 12). This highlights that respondents are looking ahead and planning for the future to embed greater sustainability and business resilience, especially as climate events become more frequent and prevalent.
Nearly half of survey respondents (47%) named resilience as the top driver for their utility’s sustainability plan, followed by community (40%) and regulatory considerations (39%) (Figure 13). This is consistent with the growing recognition and focus across business, community and regulatory stakeholders on water as a critical and limited resource that needs to be conserved and managed even more carefully as population growth and water demand increases.
Yet as drought continues to grip portions of the United States, making the adequacy of water resources in some regions a hot topic, just one-third (34%) of survey respondents said they’re “very confident” in the resiliency of their water supply — down sharply from 45% in 2024.
This is reflected in the top strategies respondents are pursuing for sustainability, all being related to addressing and increasing resilience. When asked what sustainability strategies their utilities are planning to pursue, nearly seven in 10 respondents (68%) chose “asset management and operational efficiency” as a key strategy, while 52% cited “water loss mitigation and conservation strategies” and half said “creation of risk and/or resilience plans.” Rounding out the top five: “implementation of energy-efficiency strategies” (46%) and “new/ alternative water supplies or reuse” (35%) (Figure 14).
Throughout the survey results, the concerns of respondents are consistent. Nearly three-quarters (72%) said affordability was the leading impediment in achieving their sustainability strategy, while more than half (51%) noted they lacked the resources or capacity to tackle their goals (Figure 15). The persistent need to do more with less continues to challenge water providers as they seek practical and affordable strategies with limited human and financial resources.
These challenges — funding and personnel resources — give insight into the conflict between the sustainability strategies that utilities are pursuing and the timelines in which they can be realistically implemented.
Despite that, a majority of respondents share that they are actioning their top three strategies in the near-term and mid-term, with 60 to 70% implementing action in the near term (one to two years) and 80 to 85% implementing action within the next five years (Figure 16).
Actions in the nearest time horizon include key foundational building blocks that are important for implementing any priorities— financial modeling, personnel training and new rate structures.
Looking beyond two years, 44% see new water supplies or reuse within the next five years, given the early planning work and stakeholder engagement needed to set the stage for project implementation. The increased percentage may be linked to forthcoming implementation schedules on already planned projects. Along with reuse, alternative supply resources include stormwater, rainwater and desalinated seawater. The longer timeline for implementing these resources may reflect the timing and construction needed to make these resources available.
Of the 20 strategies that utilities plan to implement, 17 had a timeline survey pegged at 10 years or less by at least 80% of respondents. This indicates that attaining a resilient water future that also aligns with sustainability goals remains a substantial part of the activity water organizations have underway. More than half of respondents believe they’ll reach their goals within the next decade.
Along with sustainability, the focus on water supply is crucial to communities that depend on reliable water. When asked if they would be able to provide water supply to a large industry coming to their area, 65% of respondents — a drop from 77% in 2023 — said they have sufficient system capacity and supply. There was a 5% rise in respondents noting they have capacity but not supply and a 7% uptick in having supply but not capacity (Figure 17).
Could this decrease in capacity and supply reflect a lack of optimism from a few years ago or is it an indication of a growing interest in water supply that now surpasses projected system capacity? As the country grapples with the proliferation of data centers across the United States (a topic discussed at length elsewhere in this report), the spotlight shines a light on the sizable amounts of water those businesses demand for cooling where peak demand generally occurs during summer. Utilities are working to understand their capabilities, regardless of whether they are truly located in a water-rich area.
One way to get a read on all of it is with a “One Water” — or holistic, integrated approach to water management — lens, which focuses on all sources of supply types that a location may have, including such resources as surface water or potable water. From there, the utility assesses its demands, its uses for water and anything else that can be added to the water matrix such as stormwater, desalination and water reuse.
This type of planning and implementation is a holistic approach to a water supply problem that persists among utilities, and it ultimately could provide necessary planning for the days when water supply is extremely limited — begging the question of why more are not implementing this approach, as the survey for this report bears out.
When asked if they’ve developed a One Water/integrated water supply plan, only 28% answered affirmatively. More than one-third (35%) said they didn’t know, 15% said “no but they need to do this in the future,” and 22% said “no, and they don’t see a need to do it.”
While the future of sustainability remains uncertain, utilities remain steadfast in their commitments to their communities, ensuring resiliency in the face of flooding, water supply issues and the litany of other headwinds the water sector admirably continues to weather.
