Baltimore DPW graduates first YH2O pre-apprenticeship class

Baltimore City’s Department of Public Works graduated 15 participants from its redesigned YH2O pre-apprenticeship program on Monday and inducted a second cohort at the same ceremony. The milestone turned a six-month training class into a test of whether Baltimore can keep building a steady pipeline of workers for its large, aging water and sewer systems.

YH2O is a partnership between the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, DPW and the Chesapeake Water Environment Association. Baltimore City says the program is built for residents ages 18 to 24 who have a high school diploma or GED and are unemployed or underemployed, pairing hands-on training and mentorship with job shadowing, career coaching, industry-related tours and direct connections to employers.

City officials have treated the program as a workforce ladder since it launched in 2015. The Mayor’s Office of Employment Development said 114 young men and women had completed YH2O as of Jan. 28, 2022, and the city says past graduates have moved into DPW jobs including laborers, community aides, operations technician apprentices and customer care analysts. The city has also expanded the mentoring model into solid waste and information technology.

The Chesapeake Water Environment Association said in 2018 that more than 50 residents ages 18 through 24 had already moved into entry-level jobs through the program. By then, the association said, the model had drawn interest from utilities in Texas, Mississippi and North Carolina and had become a national workforce-development example. That broader adoption matters in Baltimore because the city’s utility system depends on technical labor that can keep aging infrastructure functioning and reduce the strain that comes with constant maintenance.

The latest class gave the city another chance to connect young adults to middle-class careers without sending them outside Baltimore for training or work. It also showed the city trying to make YH2O more than a one-time recruitment effort: the first graduating class finished just as the next group entered the six-month pipeline, keeping the program moving as DPW looks for the next generation of workers to staff its water, sewer and environmental operations.