The Washington-East Washington Joint Authority (WEWJA) is a publicly owned wastewater authority serving approximately 45,000 customers across seven communities in southwest Pennsylvania. With over 17,000 connections and a 10 million gallon per day treatment plant, WEWJA provides essential service with a lean team and no dedicated public affairs personnel.

For years, that lean model worked. Service was reliable, rates were low and communications stayed minimal. But in 2025, WEWJA found itself at an inflection point — navigating a pending Consent Order and Agreement (COA) with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, driven by compliance challenges related to disinfection byproducts and wet weather hydraulic overloading. The path forward would require significant capital investments and rate increases. WEWJA took stock and asked a hard question: Are we providing intentional communication to our customers?

Client

Washington-East Washington Joint Authority

Industry

Municipal wastewater utility

Duration

3 months (website); ongoing communications program

approach and execution

WEWJA partnered with Bā to build a communications strategy grounded in what their customers actually needed — not what was easiest to publish.
Bā began with a comprehensive discovery to understand the history of the Authority, its governance, the surrounding community, and its unique infrastructure needs. The team drew from this foundational context to then make determinations on the communications gaps that WEWJA currently had and how best to communicate with its stakeholders, whether that be its customers, local business owners, its board and other elected officials and the media. It was determined that to reach the maximum number of stakeholders, an overhaul of wewja.com was a top priority.

"One of the first priorities we identified was modernizing our website — an important touchpoint for our ratepayers. The new site is designed to be more user-friendly, mobile accessible and transparent, making it easier to find information and see how public funds are being invested in critical infrastructure."
— Rob Herring, Executive Director, Washington-East Washington Joint Authority

Then came the technical audit of WEWJA’s legacy website. Findings revealed the depth of the challenge. Over three months, the site generated 12,896 page views from 5,416 users — but 100% of pages were missing meta descriptions and only 8 of 59 pages were indexable. Customers were looking for information; the site simply wasn’t showing up to meet them.

 

The audit findings shaped a research-driven redesign approach. Bā further analyzed WEWJA’s key audiences — ratepayers, new residents, developers, regulatory stakeholders — and used those insights alongside SEO benchmarking to build a new information architecture from the ground up. All content was rewritten in plain language, with complex regulatory topics made accessible to everyday readers. A modern yet friendly visual identity was introduced, and the site was structured to serve as a living communications platform, not just a digital bulletin.

 

Critically, Bā designed the project to maximize WEWJA’s limited internal resources. Staff across leadership, billing and administration contributed to content accuracy and the collection of digital assets like forms and images, while Bā carried the strategy, writing, design and development.

 

  • Digital Audit + Strategy: Identified site-wide indexability failures, SEO gaps and structural barriers, translating findings into a clear, actionable redesign roadmap.
  • Information Architecture: Rebuilt site structure around user needs, with new pages covering development services, capital projects, programs and rate + billing resources.
  • Plain-Language Content Strategy: Rewrote all web copy to ensure customers could understand complex infrastructure and regulatory topics without a background in wastewater.
  • Technical SEO: Resolved 100% of indexability issues, added metadata across all pages and built structured content designed to improve search visibility over time.
  • Website Development: Built and launched the full site in three months within a $24,675 budget, with a $370/month maintenance contract.
  • Ongoing Communications Planning: Established the website as Phase 1 of a broader initiative, with quarterly newsletters, bill inserts and rate communications as subsequent phases.

The new site launched in March 2026 — positioned as a source of truth for ratepayers as WEWJA begins communicating more openly about capital improvements, compliance and the future of their system.

 

 

THE RESULTS

 

Early performance indicators show meaningful improvement across every key measure:

 

  • Average session duration increased from :51 seconds to 1:50 seconds after launch
  • Keywords ranking #1 increased from 4 to 5
  • Keywords in the top 10 increased from 7 to 12
  • Keywords in the top 20 increased from 15 to 21
  • Indexability improved from 8 of 59 pages to full site indexability

Ongoing evaluation will track newsletter engagement and community feedback as WEWJA’s communications program continues to grow.

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