It's a First!
This is our first sustainability report, and one of the first to be published among municipal utilities in the U.S. Although private corporations and some utilities outside the U.S. have been reporting their sustainability performance for years, American wastewater utilities have just started to adopt this practice.
Purpose
In today’s world, people recognize that an organization’s performance should be measured in more than financial terms – that it is equally important to understand an organization’s impacts on the natural environment, as well as the impacts on its people (employees, customers, vendors) and community (neighbors, elected officials, and partner organizations).
The purpose of this report is to share our vision for a sustainable future while documenting 2009 baseline sustainability performance, including both challenges and achievements of the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) of Greater Cincinnati in all three of the following categories:
- Operational and environmental performance
- Social and community performance
- Financial and risk performance
We intend to publish sustainability reports at regular intervals, and our aim is to show improvement over time.
What the Report Covers
In these pages, we describe MSD’s baseline performance in 2009 and our goals for the future. We focus on activities that MSD controls directly, and we use sustainability indicators to measure our performance compared to long-term targets.
Reporting Standards and Performance Indicators
In preparing this report, we reached out to many MSD
stakeholders, including community groups, industry
representatives, environmental non-profit organizations,
political leaders, and residential ratepayers. In these
conversations, people told us what MSD performance
issues are most important to them and which sustainability
issues are top-of-mind. We used this input, alongside
guidance provided by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
sustainability standard, to select the tailored sustainability
performance indicators for this report. These indicators are
summarized in the Sustainability at a Glance section and
are supported by content throughout the report.
Thanks to Our Contributors and Advisors
A diversity of customers, employees, neighbors, elected officials, and government agencies graciously provided information for this report, and we sincerely thank these many partners for their contributions.
