Back row, left to right: Kumar Navile, Nicole Benoit, and Dan Thiessen. Front row, left to right: Emily Huff and Sarah Koskinen.

PWSA’s Environmental Compliance group is responsible for ensuring we operate in accordance with the strict requirements of the law and with high ethical and professional standards. While each day is different, this team manages our Environmental Compliance Program; oversees activities associated with our NPDES-held permits; conducts inspections in tandem with Operations; leads public education in conjunction with Public Affairs; and much more.

In the past few years alone, this team has been further built out to support our renewed focus on environmental compliance and ethics. Now made up of six compliance professionals from a variety of backgrounds – like food and steel manufacturing, biology, water distribution, and government – they’re led by Frank Sidari, Chief Environmental Compliance & Ethics Officer, and Kumar Navile, Environmental Compliance Program Manager. Rounding out the team are Environmental Compliance Specialists Emily Huff, Sarah Koskinen, and Dan Thiessen and Senior Environmental Compliance Specialist Nicole Benoit. This group hasn’t just evolved in size. They’ve also had a role in evolving how PWSA approaches this compliance work, taking on a more proactive, creative, and solution-oriented mindset, working closely with departments to find solutions that are both legally sound and in the public interest.

They’ve also helped increase communication with the PGH2O teams who need it most. In support of that, the team participates in Monday Morning Tailgates at the Aspinwall Water Treatment Plant and our field sites to highlight pertinent compliance- and ethics-related topics, alongside PWSA Operation and Safety staff. Whether that week details illicit discharges or proper chemical storage, the point is this: each of us here at PWSA has an important role to play in driving environmental compliance and ethics.