Case Study: Public Relations
Client: The City of Lynchburg, VA
How a City successfully tackled the largest capital improvement
project in its history.
The Situation
Lynchburg, Virginia, faced an unfunded government mandate to overhaul
an enormous portion of the city’s century-old sewer system.
The problem was that during heavy rainfall, stormwater would overload
Lynchburg’s sewer system and cause it to back up and overflow
at more than 100 locations. The mandate’s objective would
be to remedy this problem, called “combined sewer overflow” (CSO).
Much of the overflowing stormwater came from residential gutters
with downspouts connected directly into the sewer system. Fixing
the problem would not only require the disconnection of downspouts
on thousands of homes, but would also require the excavation and
replacement of 17 miles of pipe—nearly all of which lay beneath
paved streets. The work would take decades; the cost was almost
unimaginable. Estimates ranged from $200 and $300 million dollars,
with no state or federal funds in sight.
How could the city lessen the economic impact of accomplishing
the CSO work … and how could it help citizens grasp the magnitude
of the task at hand?
The Solution
Blair Marketing had two parts in the CSO program. First, they
devised an approach that would not only give citizens a sense of “ownership” and
participation in the program, but would also help to dramatically
reduce the cost of the work. In several test project areas, the
City took the traditional route of having City crews come into
neighborhoods and disconnect the downspouts before performing the
street excavations. However, it quickly became evident that this
method would entail costs of more than $1,100 per residence.
Blair Marketing proposed an alternate solution: give the homeowners
an incentive to handle the disconnections themselves. A review
of local contractors’ rates determined that $150 per downspout
would cover the cost of professional disconnections. Residents
were then given the freedom to employ a contractor for their disconnections,
or else do the work themselves and keep the $150.
The second role Blair played in Lynchburg’s CSO efforts
involved extensive PR measures. Blair developed newspaper ads,
direct mail pieces, door hangers, handouts, displays, produced
a “how to disconnect your downspouts” video, established
a dedicated CSO “info-line” staffed five days a week,
and conducted public meetings in every affected neighborhood. These
efforts educated citizens about the challenges Lynchburg faced,
helped them understand the need for controlled increases in sewer
rates, gave them a chance to speak out and ask questions, and instructed
them on how they could help.
The Results
Thanks to homeowner participation, work on the CSO solution advanced
faster and less expensively than anyone had forseen. At the onset,
skeptics projected this unconventional plan would yield no more than
10% participation. In reality citizen participation in the program
surpassed 70%. And even with the corresponding inspection and
administration expenses, this strategy lowered disconnection costs
to about $600 per residence, and enabled work at 4,600 homes to be
completed in about 4 years—a feat that would not have been
possible using City crews alone.
Citizens were made allies in the project, and because of the City’s
extensive citizen-education efforts, public opposition was virtually
non-existent. For its efforts in implementing this innovative program,
Lynchburg was rewarded with the prestigious President’s Award
for Entreprenurial Government by the Virginia Municipal League. Other
cities from coast to coast facing similar challenges have looked
to Lynchburg’s private-sector solution as a model … and
have even duplicated some of Blair’s materials. |
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