Happy to Be Here: Local roots, world outlook

Through the year, the Central Bucks Chamber invites special speakers to its Chairman’s Circle dinner meetings at Barley Sheaf Farm in Holicong. They’re always high achievers who’ve gained recognition in government or industry and they have something to say.
Often, the speakers are locals, people who grew up here and advanced to regional and national careers. Christopher Franklin is one of those. He spoke to the chamber group in December and we talked by phone last week.
Franklin is president and chief executive officer of Essential Utilities in Bryn Mawr, the parent company of Aqua Pennsylvania, which provides water or wastewater services in eight states. According to its website, it pulls in revenue of $1.46 billion a year.
He was born in Warminster, moved to Lansdale, attended Lansdale Catholic High School and he spent many summers haunting the trails of Peace Valley Park and the waters of Lake Galena in Doylestown Township. He has a bachelor’s degree from West Chester University and an M.B.A. from Villanova.
“I’m a regional kid,” Franklin said, and he may be his company’s biggest cheerleader. He boasts about it with unabashed enthusiasm. “On any given day,” Franklin said, “Aqua sends out 10 billion gallons of water. We don’t have issues with drought.”
There’s an economic vitality driven by infrastructure at Essential Utilities, he said. After acquiring old systems, the company has been replacing 200 miles of water mains every year. “We’re in an old part of the country,” he said, with piping in many places – Bristol is one of them – more than a hundred years old.
“We build on what our forefathers did,” Franklin said. The company starting buying wastewater plants in the early 2000s. Recently it acquired Lower Makefield’s sewage treatment plant
Essential Utilities traces its roots to the Springfield Water Company, chartered in 1886 to provide water to Swarthmore in Delaware County. The company expanded to Chester and Montgomery counties and name changed in 1925, to Philadelphia Suburban Water Company. The company joined the New York Stock Exchange in 1971. The Stock Exchange adopted the new name of Aqua America in 2004. Nicholas DeBenedictus, chairman at the time, said, “In the past 10 years, our customer base has grown by more than 300%, transitioning us from a regional company in Southeastern Pennsylvania ... that provides water and wastewater service to approximately 2.5 million people. We are now the largest U.S.-based, publicly-traded water utility operating in multiple regions of the country. This weighed heavily in the decision to change the company’s name.”

Franklin, named the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year in 2019, has served as CEO since 2015. In an effort to diversify, Aqua America acquired Peoples Natural Gas in Pittsburgh and that move inspired yet another name change – Essential Utilities. For that company, Franklin said, 3,000 miles of pipeline will be replaced by 2035 and the goal is to reduce the pipeline’s and vehicles’ carbon footprint by 60% in the next 16 years. “We thought we could make an environmental difference moving gas,” Franklin said. With a 5% reduction in 2021, the company is on track to reach its goal.
And Franklin is proud of the water quality in Aqua-operated systems. He mentioned the federal standard for PFAS content for water –70 parts per trillion gallons of water. The average of Aqua’s footprint in New Jersey, he said is 13 parts per trillion. Essentials has opened a new water testing lab in Bryn Mawr, one of only two laboratories certified to test for PFAS in the region.
“Health and Safety is our highest priority,” Franklin said.
Another priority is diversity in a company that presently includes 15% non-white employees. There’s an effort underway to have each office reflect the population of the community it serves; some of the communities are populated mostly with people of color. And there’s an effort to trade with a diverse mix of vendors.
Franklin spoke with pride of Essential Utilities’ Environmental, Social and Governance report (ESG) published in 2021. This year’s report, the company says, “is particularly exciting, as it fully incorporates all of the Peoples operations and initiatives with Aqua’s. Franklin is recorded on the company website.
“As technology continues to rapidly develop, we will continually innovate to transform our operations and processes as we strive to achieve our ultimate aspiration of net zero,” according to the website. “Essential remains on schedule to source nearly 100% of our electric power from renewables for our water and wastewater operations in Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania by 2022.”
The company, like many others, has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic so far and is looking forward to the return of employees to their offices.

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