Two days at the 2026 National Association of Water Companies (NAWC) Annual Water Summit in Austin brought together water utilities, regulators, and solution providers to discuss one key question:

How to fund and document water utility capital investment.

Three themes stood out from the sessions and hallway conversations.

1. Regulators Want Project-Level Evidence for Capital Recovery

The Regulator’s Scale panel put it plainly: regulators across the country are weighing growth, technology investment, and customer affordability at the same time. Our conversations echoed that theme as well. Jurisdictions are increasingly looking across state lines to see how peers handle aging infrastructure, PFAS treatment, and lead service line replacement, and they are benchmarking their own recovery mechanisms against what’s working elsewhere.

For finance teams, that means recovery increasingly hinges on evidence that holds up to that comparison: itemized, project-level documentation rather than a lump-sum request. Utilities that show their work tend to move through rate cases more smoothly, and clear rate case documentation is one of the most direct ways to reduce regulatory lag.

2. Auditable Asset Records Support Growth and Acquisitions

Whether the conversation was about integrating an acquired system, closing the books faster, or defending a capital plan in front of regulators, it kept circling back to the same underlying need: one reliable, auditable asset record that doesn’t have to be rebuilt manually at every handoff. For water companies growing through acquisition, that record matters even more as municipal tie-ins and fair market value legislation shape how deals are valued and integrated. We explore this further in our look at water utilities consolidating, investing, and modernizing at the same time.

3. Water Utilities Are Drawing More Partners to the Capital Need

PFAS treatment and lead service line replacement are now capital priorities and no longer edge cases. Electric utilities draw much of the attention for data center load growth but utilities face a capital need of their own to support these large builds. Beyond physical infrastructure, Cybersecurity investment is rising alongside it as water systems become more digital.

The vendor hall at NAWC showed exactly how the ecosystem is prepared to support utilities who are looking for help meeting that need: capital firms looking to invest, asset management platforms, treatment technology providers, and tax and regulatory advisory sitting alongside the pipe and meter vendors. This shift reflects the reality of 2026.  Funding and executing at this scale takes more than any one finance or engineering team to carry alone, and the broader partner network gives utilities more ways to share the load.

We look forward to Coronado Bay in 2027. Until then, we welcome the conversation with North America water utilities and partners.

---

At PowerPlan, we work with the largest utilities in North America and support their management of more than $4 trillion in regulated assets. What makes that scale significant is the integrity of the data underneath it. The PowerPlan NXT platform seamlessly carries each asset’s regulatory, accounting, and tax details forward without re-entry or re-mapping, so the integrity of the data is defensible before water regulators and tax authorities. When terms change and cost allocations shift with them, that asset-level detail is what lets you turn the change into information the rates and regulatory group can actually use – in hours, not weeks. Start the conversation with us today.