In 2024, the Water Hub launched our Just Infrastructure campaign to create the communications tools that celebrate the wins of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act and make the case for justice-centered water infrastructure. We developed a website, graphics, fact sheets, and message guides after dozens of conversations with advocates, practitioners, and experts, and in collaboration with artists. The campaign also included an animated video that paired the voices of community advocates with art and music to bring the story to life.
Obviously, politics and policies have changed in the last two years, but the building blocks behind the messaging work remain strong. So, we updated our four main message guides so they will hold up no matter what. The new guides make an evergreen case for why water investment works, what voters want to see more of, and how to talk about the government’s responsibility to fund it. Our goal is to help partners tell a positive, proactive story: that safe, affordable water and sanitation, healthy rivers, and flood protections are investments that pay off in public health, jobs, and stronger communities.
Download the guides
The wins in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law didn’t happen by accident. This progress was the result of decades of organizing by water groups, community advocates, and elected allies to push water onto the federal agenda. That progress wasn’t enough, and much is at risk. As of January 2026, only 41% of the $40 billion allocated to EPA through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law had actually been spent, and any program with a whiff of environmental justice language is on the chopping block.
Read on for our messaging best practices across all the guides and what’s next.
Lead with values
- Every message guide starts with the same building blocks: values first, then the problem, the solution, and a call to action. Health, family, fairness, and safety show up again and again as a starting point before we mention any particular problem, program, or project.
- We know that connecting with people on shared values is an important first step in any conversation. The most effective messages tap into closely held concerns, speak to a current problem the audience is experiencing, and offer a solution and a call to action.
Name the system
- The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that our current democratic and economic systems aren’t working for everyone. This narrative needs to be addressed head-on to overcome disengagement and apathy.
- The failures described across these message guides (millions without safe drinking water they can afford, toxic taps, neighborhoods flooding, well water contaminated or running dry) are themselves symptoms of decades of underinvestment and climate change.
- When we talk about solutions, we should paint a picture of systems-level fixes rather than one-off repairs. We can fix the pattern of underinvestment that left lead pipes in the ground for decades. Funding nature-based infrastructure and restoring floodplains shift systems that relied on concrete buffers to move water quickly to ones that work with nature to filter out pollution and keep water out of overloaded streets and storm drains.
Tell the local solutions stories
- Public opinion polling consistently shows that people trust local government more than Washington. But they don’t realize how much of local water funding actually comes from federal dollars. When that funding falls short, the cost gets passed on to families through higher water rates, and infrastructure repairs get pushed further down the road. Shifting the burden of funding major national infrastructure onto local tax or rate bases hits lower-income communities hardest.
- To bridge this gap and overcome the sense that progress is impossible, the updated message guides include a new section called “Building on progress.” The section highlights examples of how water investments are already delivering and bolsters the case for further investment.
- When people see a program delivering clean water to a community, policy and funding decisions become tangible, and progress feels possible. Share these stories from your own community to make your case.
Additional messaging resources
- The Value of Water Campaign’s Economic Impact report. We tend to find the public is most moved by values-led messaging and the practical benefits of water investments. However, when speaking with elected officials and other decision-makers, economic arguments are crucial. This is true when making the case for big-dollar investments or working to overcome the narrative that government spending is inherently wasteful. We especially love how Value of Water offers state- and topic-specific fact sheets, economic benefit stats, and plug-and-play graphics at the ready!
- We Need to Close the Hope Gap: We’re inspired by the work of BLIS Collective to identify that, as a movement, we need to move people to support our issues and to believe that change is possible.
- Everyone Thinks the System is Rigged: It’s a Narrative Opportunity. This article shares key takeaways from the Radical Communicators Network’s Rising Narratives for Radical Futures magazine, which inspires us through the following recommendations: offer real alternatives to the status quo; dig into the reasons why people feel the system is rigged; and really get to know your audience, what they want, and who they want to hear from.
- 7 things rural stories taught us in 2025: Resource Rural’s work reminds us that “storytelling works best when it’s treated as shared infrastructure, not decoration.” Show up and build relationships over time. Center the benefit. Speak plainly and with care. These are best practices to live by.
What's next
We’ve got a lot of new collaborations in the works, so stay tuned!
We’ve been working with national partners to synthesize the massive amounts of public polling research to provide narrative guidance across all clean water issues, so our organizations, even if our strategies differ, are all rowing in the same direction. We’re continuing to explore new messaging avenues to make inroads with different audiences. For example, early research shows that calling out large corporate water users, from industrial agriculture to tech companies building data centers, may move rural and Republican audiences. And we’re working with regional community-based organizations to launch a national Water For Everybody campaign that builds on the success of our friends in Detroit.
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