Nick Rowe
Nick Rowe
In Central Kentucky, when you turn a faucet handle and clean water gushes out, there’s a lot of work and infrastructure behind that miracle. Nick Rowe has dedicated his work life to water utilities, spending 35 years with American Water in numerous states and rising through management to become president of Kentucky American Water and a senior vice president of American Water.
Rowe, who is retiring, is a family man, as well as a corporate leader. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Western Kentucky University and a master’s degree in business administration from Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. He has been involved with numerous regulatory agencies, civic organizations, and professional associations and has held board positions with several foundations, business and community organizations. He served as the first African- American chair of Commerce Lexington and the second African-American chair of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Rowe reflects on his experience and shares insights about water, work and life.
What are some significant changes you’ve seen in the industry?
A big change has been the advancement of technology — particularly computer systems called SCADA systems, which open and close valves and allows for instantaneous monitoring. Employees no longer have to go into the pipe gallery underneath the treatment plant, down on their knees to open and close valves. Before, every valve in the plant had to be opened and closed manually. Today operators have the technical expertise to understand the technology and the ability in an emergency, like a power outage, to still do it the old way.
It was a big transition for our workers in the field and at the plant facilities, and we instituted a lot of training for our employees.
What is the size and scope of Kentucky American Water’s customer base and infrastructure?
We serve over 130,000 customers in Central Kentucky and other counties. Some infrastructure in the ground is 100 years old. We have thousands of miles of pipes, thousands of fire hydrants and other facilities, like tanks, that make up the infrastructure.
Infrastructure maintenance is a challenge across the country and, as a whole, water and wastewater infrastructure in the U.S. is in very bad condition. The good news for Kentucky American Water and American Water customers is that we have an ongoing program to replace that aging infrastructure. We’re reducing the age of the infrastructure over time by investing millions of dollars each year. Water is the one utility product that we ingest in our bodies, so we’ve got to get it right.
What is a major project undertaken during your leadership?
Lexington is one of the largest cities in the U.S. that is not on a major waterway. Our water supply mainly comes from the Kentucky River. We, American Water, undertook a project to solve Central Kentucky’s water deficit. We put a $160 million new plant in place in 2010 at Pool 3 on the Kentucky River. It added 20 million gallons of capacity for Central Kentucky, which solved a decades-old problem of not having enough water. That allowed us to pull from a different part of the river and pump that water from near Owenton back toward Lexington. It enables us to handle the growth in Central Kentucky and those counties we serve.
What are your thoughts about private versus public ownership of water utilities?
Years ago, in the 1880s, some businessmen in Lexington started the Lexington Hydraulic & Manufacturing Company because the city didn’t have a water utility. This water utility became Kentucky American Water. So, we’ve always been privately held. Since then there has been debate around private enterprise, and there are also some good municipal systems around the country.
It’s a resource issue for us. We feel that we have the expertise, the people, the workforce, and the capital to finance projects and replace the infrastructure that maybe some of these municipalities don’t have. We use our size and scale to buy materials at reduced cost and pass those savings on to our customers.
Under your leadership, what were some best practices put in place?
Our values are safety, teamwork, trust, environmental compliance and leadership. Being a high-performance organization, the No. 1 value is the safety of our employees. American Water nationally serves millions of customer, and we’re only allowed, nationwide, six notices of violations in one year. That’s 20 times better than the industry average. Those are the kinds of standards we set on safety and environmental compliance.
The other thing that we’ve done is to try to move the diversity and inclusion needle. We start every meeting in American Water with a safety moment by one of our employees, followed by an inclusion and diversity moment. We have really focused on inclusion and diversity, because in our minds, our workforce needs to reflect and look like the communities we serve. It’s very awkward for people to talk about diversity at the beginning of a meeting when they’re not used to doing that. It was hard enough to get them to talk about safety. Now we have employees from all different backgrounds, talking about their diverse experiences and sharing different diversity challenges they’ve had over the years, and we learn from each other through that process.
What are some challenges?
Right now, it’s supply-chain challenges and trying to get materials so that we can keep up with infrastructure replacement. We’re trying to stay ahead by buying materials in bulk and storing them in case we run into a delay. Because our supply chain group is so large nationally, we’re buying miles of pipe and fittings and large quantities of chemicals in bulk.
Hiring continues to be a challenge for all businesses. I was with American Water 35 years, but you don’t see a lot of that anymore. People change jobs and positions. As a business, you have to be creative and make sure you’re creating a winning culture so that people want to stay. You have to be flexible. We place a large focus in our organization on culture and having leadership in place who treat people well.
What is your advice to young leaders?
I’ve always believed in servant leadership. Wherever I worked in American Water, the job has been to serve the public, but just as importantly to serve the employees. People primarily remember how you make them feel. So, my encouragement to young leaders is to remember to treat people how you want to be treated. Have I made the employees I work with better? Have I made our community better? In the end, that’s all that matters. How did you balance your professional and personal life? That’s the No. 1 question I get asked by leaders in the business, and I tell them you have to own your work-life balance. You can’t count on anyone else. If I was traveling out of town and a parent-teacher conference was on Thursday night, I tried to get back Thursday morning so that I could go. My daughters played basketball and soccer at Dunbar. I was at those ball games. I made it a priority, and today my daughters remember me being there. It’s difficult as you move up in an organization and responsibilities become numerous, but it’s paid dividends for my family.