Turning Water Investment Into Impact

In this segment of The Water Online Show, hosts Travis Kennedy and Kevin Westerling sit down with Karine Rougé, Executive Vice President of Strategic Transformations and Chairwoman of Regulated Water for North America at Veolia, and Rob Powelson, President and CEO of the National Association of Water Companies, to unpack a growing shift in the U.S. water sector: treating water infrastructure as an economic imperative, not just a utility function. Grounded in a new white paper authored by the two guests, the conversation explores what that shift really means for utilities, policymakers, and the broader market — and why translating momentum into measurable progress remains a complex challenge. 00:33 | Why Isn’t Water Progress Moving Faster? 02:08 | Water As An Economic Driver 08:32 | The Real Bottlenecks In Water Infrastructure 14:14 | Funding vs. The Trillion-Dollar Gap 16:30 | Why Funding Doesn’t Always Turn Into Projects 19:12 | The Missing Piece: Public Urgency 21:31 | Fragmentation, Scale, And Utility Performance 30:15 | Regulation And Digital Adoption Challenges 39:39 | What Needs To Change To Drive Real Progress Access this and other episodes of the Water Online Show podcast at wateronline.com --- #watersector #waterinfrastructure #wateronlineshow #municipalwater #industrialwater #wastewatertreatment #wateronline --- Subscribe to the podcast: Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Amazon - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/98e... Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6FRuO7y... YouTube -    • Water Online Show