Introducing the Resource Library for North Carolina’s Water & Wastewater Utilities

By Alicea Easthope-Frazer, Senior Project Director, SOG Environmental Finance Center

Small utilities often carry big challenges – aging infrastructure, tight budgets, lean staffing, regulatory pressures, and rising demands. Over the years, we repeatedly heard from utility staff, elected officials, and operators that though good tools and guidance exist, they are scattered, hard to find, or not tailored to small systems.

That insight drove the School of Government’s Environmental Finance Center (SOG EFC) to develop the Resource Library for North Carolina’s Water & Wastewater Utilities, a new tool that is now live and available to all at https://uncsog.shinyapps.io/efc_resourcelibrary/.

The Backstory

This library was born out of a research effort that was part of the Innovative Highly Treated Wastewater (HTWW) Pilot Program, launched under Senate Bill 105 (2021) and managed by the NC Collaboratory. The HTWW program allocated $20 million to support selected wastewater systems in upgrading or replacing treatment plants to meet more stringent effluent standards.

As part of that work, SOG EFC sought to assess the challenges and opportunities facing small utilities to realistically meet these new effluent thresholds in a sustainable way – not just technically, but financially and managerially.

To do so, our team visited each of the HTWW pilot program’s recipient utilities and conducted semi-structured interviews with staff, elected leaders, contractors, and others – totaling over 400 hours of transcripts.

From those conversations, one theme became clear: many utilities already knew what good practices and tools looked like, but the more pressing barrier was access – knowing where to find them, judging their fit, and applying them under local constraints.

Thus, the Resource Library is a direct response: a curated, organized, searchable collection of materials that can support utilities’ technical, managerial, and financial (TMF) capacity. Its goal is to take away the friction of searching and help local leaders more easily get to the guidance they need.

What’s inside

The library is structured around several major topic areas (clickable filters or sections) that reflect recurring challenges we saw in interviews:

• Budget & Finance – rate setting, funding strategies, capital planning, debt, balancing affordability and revenue, and more
• Operations & Management – improving system performance, workflow optimization, asset management, regulatory compliance, etc.
• Workforce Training & Education – recruiting, retention, apprenticeship models, succession planning, and knowledge transfer
• Customer Communication – transparency, public engagement, explaining rates, responding to feedback, and trust building
• Managing Growth – planning for expanding demand, managing high-volume customers, infrastructure constraints, and economic development alignment

Each resource is tagged by topic and subtopic, and the interface allows users to search, filter, and browse. There’s also a glossary to help with technical or regulatory terms.

Town staff shouldn’t have to “reinvent the wheel.” When you encounter a tricky issue, you now have a launchpad of tools, case studies, templates, and guidance.

Why this library matters

From our interviews, a few recurring barriers stood out:

• Fragmentation & discoverability – Many helpful tools or guides exist, but they live in disparate places (EPA sites, engineering firms’ pages, academic reports, non-profit sites), and smaller utilities often lack time or bandwidth to search widely. The library bundles those resources in one place.
• Context & relevance – Large systems often have teams or consultants to adapt general guidance. Smaller utilities, with lean staffing or limited budgets, need resources that are realistic in scale, adaptable, and cognizant of constraints. Our curation aims to target small systems.
• Capacity gaps in “soft” as well as “hard” domains – It’s not just about pipes, pumps, and permits. Many of the hardest challenges are managerial or financial: rate design, succession planning, community engagement, compliance risk management. The library ensures that these crosscutting domains are appropriately represented.
• Reduced burden – When a small utility is already strapped for human resources, reducing the search burden enables more time for action or implementation.

By making it easier to get to good, relevant resources, we hope this library helps local governments make better, more informed, and more sustainable decisions – sooner rather than later.

What’s next

We see this as a living resource, not a static catalog. Some ideas on how you can engage with it:

• Use it as a first stop in problem-solving. When a new challenge emerges – say, needing to adjust rates or plan for staff turnover – go to this library first to see what templates, case studies, or guides are available and trustworthy.
• Combine with technical assistance. We and our partners remain available to help local governments interpret, adapt, or apply resources to specific circumstances.
• Submit suggestions or gaps. We welcome feedback or resource suggestions! If you know of a useful guide, case study, or tool that fits small utility contexts and is open access, we’d love to include it.
• Share it with your peers. City councils, county commissioners, utility boards, engineers, and local staff: the more people know it exists, the more impact it can have.