San Diego Water & Wastewater Utility Sector Partnership Brief
How the scorecard works + component scores
Partnership Opportunity and Organizing Readiness use weighted 0–4 evidence dimensions converted to 0–100. 75–100 = High, 55–74 = Moderate, below 55 = Low.
Evidence Confidence: A = direct/current/authoritative; B = strong evidence with limited caveats; C = directional/proxy evidence with important limitations; D = weak, stale or poorly aligned; U = insufficient. The grade describes the evidence, not the sector.
Host Fit separately assesses backbone suitability across industry credibility, convening power, neutrality, staffing/resilience, worker/community connection, education/workforce integration, regional reach and fiscal/administrative capacity. It does not grant employer-governance authority.
Funding durability is a qualitative status, not another score. Screen 0 tests multi-employer structure, a shared workforce problem, collective-action leverage and Worker Value; a high numeric score never overrides a failed or materially unresolved gate.
Treat San Diego Water Works as a mature regional sector partnership. Focus on succession, operator-in-training and worksite capacity, internship-to-hire conversion and certification progression rather than creating another water workforce collaborative.
Why this case matters
Twenty-two member agencies share the same mission-critical occupations and face a common succession problem. Work-based learning requires agency worksites, mentors and certification pathways that are more efficient to organize regionally than agency by agency.
Worker value
Canonical regional evidence places water and wastewater treatment operators around $39/hour, above the $32.88/hour San Diego single-adult living-wage benchmark.
The consortium turns succession risk into shared work experience.
The San Diego Regional Water/Wastewater Internship Program places students with member agencies for four eight-week rotations through system maintenance, system operations, water treatment and wastewater treatment. Agencies provide mentors and worksites, giving students paid experience while utilities develop a common candidate pipeline.
BAYWORK · San Francisco Bay Area
BAYWORK was established in 2009 after regional research concluded that utility workforce reliability required a shared response. Forty-five utilities contributed to early labor-needs research. Signatory utilities pay dues and elect leadership, and the consortium has supported registered apprenticeship such as Valley Water's instrumentation-and-controls pathway.
What a WDB or regional convener could do next
The sequence is intentionally staged. The partnership should only become more formal as employer ownership, worker value and shared action become more concrete.