# Interview transcript — Linnea Warren Mears

**Source:** Linnea Warren Mears, policy researcher, RAND Corporation
**Interviewer:** Brian Nuckols (Public Source)
**Date:** September 5, 2025
**Recording:** `Linnea Rand 9-5-25 PWSA.m4a` — https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mCpQL7PYOGIm6CN1e9QkJzzo0ocmoxij/view

On the record. Warren Mears asked to review her quotes in context before publication, and the
published quotations were confirmed with her. Lightly cleaned from the recording; wording verbatim.

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**Brian Nuckols:** I'm looking at the Pittsburgh situation, which I know you've written about before but have moved on from. I'm trying to understand it in the context of the broader picture. At Public Source, we call it constructive journalism. Even though things seem weird around transparency, we want to ground that in comparison instead of just an abstract desire. Before we start, what is your comfort level being on the record?

**Linnea Warren Mears:** I can absolutely speak on the record. I will say my lens is that I'm a researcher, and I've done reading and some research on related things, some of which I sent you. But I haven't done a lot of work specifically on the situation with Pittsburgh Water. So I am comfortable speaking on the record, but it would be helpful if I could review the quotes in context just to make sure that where it fits in the piece is not implying something that I didn't intend.

**Brian:** Absolutely. As part of our fact-checking process we want to be accurate as well. So how did you get into this research?

**Linnea:** I've been at RAND for 11 years and I'm a policy researcher. My background is in public health, and I moved into the community resilience space around the same time I wrote that perspective piece. The City of Pittsburgh was developing a resilience strategy, and that's how I got into infrastructure, particularly water infrastructure, because I like to work locally and we have a lot of water issues here. I got into the lead space in 2017 when PWSA was going through all that. They were starting to do partial lead line replacements and distribute water filters, and it felt like there wasn't a lot of comparison of the different options or even a laying out of what the options were.

**Brian:** From your research, what are some key indicators of healthy, transparent utility decision-making?

**Linnea:** Water governance is complicated because water systems can include drinking water, flood control, wastewater. So there's a lot of coordination required. The transparency element comes down to information being shared in a timely and accurate fashion, in ways the public can understand. The other side is transparency with accountability. We share information, we say we want to hear from community members. What do we do with what we get back? How do we show that what they've told us is influencing a future decision? That's a sign to me that there's transparency plus accountability built into the system.

**Brian:** Any model authorities that jump out to you?

**Linnea:** DC Water was on the forefront of identifying lead service lines. They did the first full inventory of lead service lines, and a lot of trust building came from that process. Milwaukee has been really good about community engagement, at least on the sewer-district side; they have a really engaged community advisory board that is part of a lot of important decisions. Austin Water went through a process of creating a long-range plan that had really great community engagement, some of it around water affordability — the Water Forward Plan.

I think rate increases are kind of inevitable across water utilities because of the scale of the infrastructure needs. We're at an interesting moment where there was a ton of federal funding, which a lot of utilities are grappling with how to spend in a way that is accountable and transparent, because they have to do it so quickly. There's an inherent trade-off between doing things quickly and doing them in a way that is ideal in terms of public engagement and transparency.

**Brian:** How common is it that mediation isn't possible, that it comes down to litigation?

**Linnea:** That is often the way this happens. Flint, that's what happened. Regulations are very important to water utilities, and that's often their North Star. It tends to be difficult for them to justify doing something more than what the regulations require. So advocates often have to speak in that language and say, "If we're talking about following the law, we will go to court and make this a legal thing." Utilities are very technocratic. They're structured around this model of "we do stuff based on the science and the engineering." That is often in conflict with community because people don't understand how it all works.

**Brian:** Which governance failures have been most costly?

**Linnea:** A lot of it is a lack of proactive pre-planning. The utilities that have been successful really are good at pre-planning. Trust is really hard to repair once it's been damaged. A failure to acknowledge past harms is a super common thing, and you're unable to basically move forward if you don't acknowledge past harms. And pre-planning requires a lot of upfront investment in things that may never come to fruition, which is hard to justify. It's the classic complaint of public health people: no one knows what we do because we stop things from happening.

**Brian:** There are concerns from advocates about what appear to be ceremonial, unanimous votes with very little discussion. What metrics would distinguish meaningful participation from something more performative?

**Linnea:** Meaningful participation changes a decision, or there can be a clear line drawn between what the participation has involved and what the utility has done. Sometimes it involves humility on the part of the utility saying, "We were planning to do this, but you told us this, so we changed our mind and now we're doing it this way." Consistency is also important — not one-time or sporadic engagements, but ongoing discussions. You're not only engaging people after a decision has been made, and you're not only engaging them when you're in a crisis and need some PR. There's a clear line between the public input and the decision, and there's a feedback loop.

**Brian:** That equity point is potentially a disconnect, because a rate increase is somewhat of a non-progressive tax.

**Linnea:** That's where different models of how to do a rate increase can be helpful. There are water affordability tools that utilities can use to help them decide how to design it. It doesn't have to be one way, like everybody pays $20 more. It can be more progressive.

**Brian:** Thank you so much for spending time with me.