City of Worcester & MassHire Awarded $423,215 Grant to Keep Regional Water Clean

The City of Worcester’s MassHire Central Region Workforce Board was awarded a $423,215 Senator Kenneth J. Donnelly Workforce Success grant to provide training and job placement services for up to 40 un- or under-employed regional residents for Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operator roles. The regional partnership includes Upper Blackstone Clean Water, Weston & Sampson, the Town of Grafton, the Town of Uxbridge, and the MA Water Environment Association.

Donnelly Workforce Success grants are funded by the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development and administered by Commonwealth Corporation through the state’s Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund. Each awarded grant aims to close the skills gap, increase access to well-paying jobs for unemployed and underemployed residents, and strengthen productivity and workforce needs among Massachusetts employers. (See: Healey-Driscoll Administration Awards $7.4 Million to Train and Place Over 1,100 Workers in Industries Statewide)

“With this critical funding from the EOLWD and Commonwealth Corporation, our wastewater treatment operator program will help relieve the regional workforce crisis in municipal and private sector wastewater treatment facilities,” said Jeff Turgeon, Executive Director of the MCRWB, adding, “Boosted by our program partners’ strong community presence and networks, we have the capacity to engage, train, and place unemployed and underemployed residents from Central MA, including those from traditionally marginalized groups.”

WHY THIS AWARD IS SIGNIFICANT

Like many of the “hard trades” in MA, the municipal and private sector wastewater treatment facilities face a workforce crisis: An aging workforce nearing retirement with very few candidates who have the credentials, qualification, and skills needed to step into the workplace. Given the role water plays in our lives, this is a massive ticking economic and ecological time bomb the program will help defuse. Program partners will coordinate and integrate efforts to identify, recruit, screen, and provide support services to train unemployed and underemployed residents within the respective Workforce Development Areas (the cities of Worcester, Fitchburg and 59 surrounding towns and communities comprising the Central Workforce Blueprint Region) and fill imminent job openings among municipal and private regional wastewater treatment employers.

RELEVANT DATA

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook projects that employment of water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators (SOC 51-8031) will decline 6% through 2033 but this calculation does not consider job openings generated by the need to replace workers who transfer to other occupations or exit the labor force (such as to retire). Despite declining employment, BLS projects about 10,300 openings nationally for water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators each year, on average, through 2033. The employment outlook is similar in Massachusetts: Through 2032, the MA Department of Economic Research projects a 4.3% decline (from 2,398 currently to 2,296) in employment of water and wastewater treatment system operators.