Estimating the Relationship Between Water Utility Workforce Quality and Water Utility Performance

ABSTRACT Workforce quality has been a major concern in the water utility sector for decades. While previous research presumes that workforce quality plays an important role in water utility performance, no research to date has explored this relationship empirically. This study represents a first attempt at quantifying the relationship between workforce quality and performance using a dataset containing water utilities in Texas serving over 500 customers, data on Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) violations, and water utility operator classes. The results of two negative binomial models, where the dependent variables are the count of SDWA health and SDWA monitoring and reporting violations between 2020 and 2024, show that workforce quality has a substantively large and statistically significant negative effect on SDWA compliance across both types of violations. An additional analysis explores the interactive effect of workforce quality and median income and workforce quality and water source on utility performance.