The Water Reuse Industry Needs More People
The rise of advanced water treatment is demanding more from an already strained water workforce. But tailored trainings and an authoritative new textbook are helping utilities meet that demand and inspire the next generation of water professionals.
Back to School
In July 2025, in a sunny conference room near Los Angeles, a diverse crowd of engineers, planners, plant operators, and interns followed Hazen Reuse Membrane Technology Practice Leader Rich Franks on a deep dive into membrane technologies.
What brought this group together for summer school? The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Hazen partnered to create a training program to introduce water reuse concepts and prepare operators for California’s Advanced Water Treatment Operator (AWTO) certification. The training is part of a collaborative effort between Hazen and LADWP's Pure Water Los Angeles team. While Hazen leads the technical content development and delivery, the Pure Water Los Angeles team provides strategic alignment to ensure the training meets the needs of future utility leaders.
This all-day session focused on microfiltration and reverse osmosis (RO), just two of many technologies that participants would learn about over the course of the 22-module series.
At the time, none of the trainees were fluent in all the advanced technologies required for reuse, but as future utility managers, they will need to be.
In July 2025, Hazen’s Rich Franks led a workshop on membrane technologies at the Albert Robles Center (above left)—one in a series of trainings on water reuse concepts—before taking trainees on a tour of the working facility (above right).
Franks peppered his lecture with questions for the class and anecdotes from his 25-year career, then led the group out to the working facility to see its advanced processes in action.
This was no ordinary conference room. Class met at the Albert Robles Center for Water Recycling and Environmental Learning—ARC for short—an advanced water treatment facility that’s open to the public. With its children’s museum, digital exhibits, demonstration gardens, scale model of the San Gabriel River, and balconies overlooking the treatment processes, this facility was designed to be a learning center for all ages. Around the corner, you might find a flock of elementary school students on a field trip or a delegation of water professionals visiting from another state.
Future training modules for LADWP might be virtual or in the field, led by a variety of facilitators and experts on each topic. Like this innovative facility, Hazen’s training program was designed to demystify water reuse technologies and kindle the curiosity of staff at every level.
Owned and operated by Water Replenishment District (WRD), the ARC treats up to 14.8 million gallons per day while providing the public with a fascinating window into the water reuse industry. Credit: WRD.
“We’re Going to Need More People”
The Pure Water Los Angeles program, a city of Los Angeles initiative led by LADWP and LA Sanitation & Environment (LASAN), supports the city's ambitious goal of transitioning to 70 percent local water supply sources. To deliver on an operational target of producing up to 230 million gallons per day (mgd) of purified recycled water, the organization will need to train not just plant operators, but managers, lab staff, administrators, planners, engineers, and customer service staff.
“Even at a 50 percent buildout, the program is huge,” explains Rafael Villegas, program manager for Pure Water Los Angeles. “From every group that we’ve briefed internally on the program, we heard, ‘Oh wow, we’re going to need more people.’”
Advanced water treatment (AWT) training has emerged as a critical piece of the organization’s growth strategy.
“You can't go from zero to 100, or from one to 50 [mgd],” said Villegas. “You have to start building that capacity as you go, so that you have the folks ready to then assume bigger and bigger scale.”
This isn’t just a challenge for Los Angeles. According to a study by the Water Services Association of Australia, there are over 60 advanced water treatment projects in development and construction globally. All of them will need highly skilled operators, not just warm bodies. As Hazen Water Reuse Practice Leader Troy Walker puts it, “One of the key pieces for the success of these projects is the capability of operations teams.”
Where is the AWT workforce going to come from?
Historically, water treatment operators needed to know basic water chemistry, disinfection, and filtration. With AWT, they also need to understand water reclamation operations that might impact them, plus the many complex treatment processes and regulations evolving within the industry.
“These systems are often called water factories rather than water treatment plants,” says Walker. “There’s more instrumentation, more analyzers, more sophisticated data management systems.”
How do municipalities with budget constraints recruit, retain, train, and incentivize people to step up and do something that is more complex and more challenging?
“It seems kind of bleak, right?” says Villegas. “But that’s why you need a plan. You can't just kind of hope that the job market will be there, particularly for a major program.”
Training early and often is critical to that plan. LADWP, like many other Hazen clients from Phoenix, Arizona, to Plant City, Florida, is sending their staff back to school.
Reverse osmosis membranes in operation (above left) and a spent RO membrane being “autopsied” during a Hazen training (above right). RO is just one of many advanced treatment processes that reuse system operators will need to understand.
A Reliable Resource
Advanced water treatment is being practiced in different communities and with different methods across the country, but so far, only California and Arizona have developed a unique certification for AWT operators. In 2024, state regulators at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) tapped Hazen to develop the test for their new AWTO certification. With an official test came the need for more formal educational materials.
“There wasn’t, and still isn't, a single, comprehensive source of information that folks could get, read, and prepare for their certification exams,” says Sue Mosburg, executive director of the California-Nevada Section of the American Water Works Association (CA-NV AWWA). She noted that study materials were scattered across the internet, produced by manufacturers, regulators, researchers, public entities, and private training providers. They were constantly changing and often paywalled.
Enter one of the world’s oldest, most reliable technologies: the printed word.
“In having conversations with industry partners that are building these facilities, what became very clear is we need a single textbook that everyone can use,” Mosburg explained. A textbook would help operators prioritize their studies on the most critical concepts for both the test and real-world, on-the-job applications.
CA-NV AWWA is partnering with multiple contributing agencies and project supporters—including LADWP, the California State Water Board's Division of Drinking Water, and WateReuse California—to create this comprehensive resource, and they selected Hazen to lead the project. Soon, much of the content developed for LADWP, as well as other utilities across the nation, will be available as a print-on-demand book.
(Above) A conceptual draft of the textbook; the final book will likely exceed 300 pages.
Above left: A backflow training at the California-Nevada Section of the American Water Works Association (CA-NV AWWA) campus. Above right: Executive Director Sue Mosburg (third from right, with utility partners) said AWWA has created key textbooks and trainings for decades. Credits left to right: CA-NV AWWA and Alec Mackie.
AWWA has a long history of developing definitive textbooks. Today’s drive for more training and certification is like déjà vu for Mosburg. She recalls how, in 1996, amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act sent legions of operators back to school for certification.
“We had people who had become distribution system operators because they wanted to go out in the field and work with their hands,” Mosburg said. “We had workers who went into this line of work for certain reasons, but that job was shifting.”
“I think it’s the same thing that we're seeing now with advanced water treatment,” she said. “That world is shifting as reuse has taken a new step forward.”
Then, as now, groups like AWWA and the California Water Environment Association (CWEA) are taking the lead in formalizing standards, manuals of practice, and other resources to help build consensus and consistency across the industry.
“The beautiful thing is that people seeking certification then were not just operators,” says Mosburg. “It was a vast array of folks that realized preparing for the certification gave them a deeper level of understanding and a better way to serve their agency.”
Rafael Villegas, who manages the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) Pure Water Los Angeles program, speaks at a meeting to engage local stakeholders. Credit: LADWP.
A Virtuous Cycle
At the intersection of traditional drinking water and wastewater practice, water reuse presents a third career pathway. Beyond the mechanically complex technologies and processes it involves, AWT also represents a culture shift towards new ways of thinking and communicating.
“It’s not just technical,” says LADWP’s Villegas, when asked about the skills that the Pure Water Los Angeles program will require. “You have the politics, the public opinion, financial, regulatory, and then you also have organizational change. This program will touch every part of the water system. That’s how big it is.” He regularly asks staff to give public presentations about the program to build their confidence in these new avenues.
Hazen engineer Nathan Boyle said an important part of that cultural shift is the ability to recognize what you don’t know.
“There's a lot to know, and you can’t know everything,” says Boyle. “Operators need to understand the treatment processes in a way that allows them to recognize when something’s not going right and take action appropriately.”
LADWP staff with community leaders during a stakeholder engagement meeting for Pure Water Los Angeles. Credit: LADWP.
If this sounds like a startup mentality, that’s because it is. Cycles of testing, analysis, and refinement lead to better outcomes. These AWT trainings are not just focused on cramming in information operators will find on the certification test but teaching critical thinking.
Hazen’s training group includes engineers, planners, and designers that have been on the operations side of advanced treatment and reuse, and they are quick to share their stories from the field.
Troy Walker, who leads Hazen’s water reuse practice group, has worked on reuse systems around the world—and draws from that experience when he trains others.
“If I talk about membranes in terms of square feet, people will fall asleep,” says Troy Walker, who has experience in AWT plants from Australia and South Korea to California and Florida. “But if I say, ‘I worked on this plant once and, let me tell you about membrane fouling,’ it makes it relatable.”
Hazen facilitators with technical expertise in designing AWT facilities are also listening to the feedback from a roomful of operators and bringing those lessons into the design process.
“The operators are out there day after day, troubleshooting these systems, applying what they learn,” says Hazen’s Rich Franks. “They bring valuable insight to these training sessions.”
This kind of extended collaboration feeds a virtuous cycle where training informs design and vice versa. Hazen’s training program sets the tone for that culture of continuous improvement AWT plants will need to succeed.
The leaders of Hazen’s advanced water treatment trainings are using feedback from facility operators (like the one above) to inform future facility designs as well as trainings.
Beyond California, Beyond Reuse
With this transformative shift come new tools, new infrastructure, new job titles, and new opportunities.
LADWP leaders, for example, see it as an opportunity to build a more inclusive, resilient workforce that reflects the people they serve, including historically underserved communities. Through targeted workforce development initiatives, Pure Water Los Angeles will create pathways for local residents—including those from disadvantaged communities—to access training, upskilling, and long-term careers in water, environmental engineering, and infrastructure development.
And these opportunities aren't limited to water-stressed regions like Southern California or Arizona, but anywhere water quality challenges demand innovative solutions.
The advanced water treatment techniques needed for reuse and other water challenges are gaining momentum in wet regions like Plant City, Florida, and Virginia Beach (above, left and right) as well as dry areas like the Western U.S.
“I look to the future and recognize that advanced treatment methods are not limited to water reuse,” says Sue Mosburg. “I see those numbers growing as regulation around emerging contaminants continues to expand.”
Operators from Florida, Virginia, and other communities with advanced water treatment facilities are watching what’s happening with AWT training and certification out west and bringing those lessons and standards home. Beyond trainings, there’s an entrepreneurial mindset that will help communities succeed at their water reuse goals.
“The systems that we’ve developed,” says LADWP’s Rafael Villegas, “the ingenuity, the innovation that has come out of undertaking this program, and that includes the new software that we use, the training that we've done...things like that will persevere.”
When it comes to cultivating the workforce that will make Pure Water Los Angeles successful, he believes training must not only equip but inspire.
“You have to get people excited about it,” he says. “It’s not just a regular nine-to-five. We’re working on something that’s bigger than ourselves. It’s a legacy program and it'll be here long after we're gone.”
The Pure Water Los Angeles program aims to use water recycling to get Los Angeles (pictured above) to 70 percent local water sources—and it’s training its staff to be ready for the new systems and ways of thinking needed for those goals.
