2026 Emerging Issues Forum
Future Forward Water
Feb. 25, 2026
Locations: Coming Soon
The second part of the 2025-2027 Emerging Issues Forum series: Future Forward Infrastructure, will focus on water.
The Challenge
The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Helene left too many North Carolina communities without clean water, highlighting the critical importance of ensuring access to water for all, especially during extreme weather events. The damage done to wells and water systems from this and earlier storms add to longer-term challenges to water and wastewater systems across the state. Left unaddressed, these challenges threaten the state’s economic vitality.
Continued population growth and economic expansion in some parts of the state brings a need for expanded service and new infrastructure to ensure economic growth and opportunities. In other–often rural–parts of the state, aging infrastructure and weak finances threaten the viability of dozens of the state’s smallest water systems. Across the state, the water sector also faces a significant shortage of qualified workers as current workers reach retirement age.
Despite some of the largest increases in water infrastructure spending in recent years, a state estimate suggests some $15 billion in investments for drinking water and $11 billion for wastewater treatment and sanitary sewers is needed in the coming decades. The emergence of new contaminants that can impact our health, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs), and the additional costs to treat them, will further compound financial pressures on water systems and their ratepayers.
The Opportunity
The 2026 Emerging Issues Forum will convene policymakers, experts, and other stakeholders to explore solutions to pressing challenges like these. In preparation, IEI staff will spend the preceding year working with state and local partners to collect data, identify promising practices and draft a set of responsive strategies that build a more resilient water future for North Carolina.
