Managerial Qualifications

Abstract

This symposium paper begins by providing a brief overview of the issues encountered by a water utility manager, and then presents results of a 1958 survey on salaries of water utility managers in the U.S. and Canada. Four recommendations for qualifications for water utility managers are listed and include: all water utility managers should have at least a high school education; any water utility serving a population of 5,000 or more should have a full‐time manager; a utility serving 10,000 or more people should have a full‐time graduate engineer, preferably a registered professional engineer; and, a utility serving a population of 25,000 or more should have a college graduate (or equivalent) as its manager. The article points out that there is a real challenge in recruiting adequately‐qualified managers for small water systems, and provides statistics on population demographics and on utility manager's salaries for the state of Colorado.