California Water Association’s 2021 Virtual Spring Conference which will take place on May 17-20, 2021 from 8:30 - 10:00 AM (PST) each day. We look forward to you joining us as we cover topics such as preparing for climate change, equitable community engagement and an update on the state legislative session.
SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE Monday, May 17, 2021 | 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, May 19, 2021 | 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. Preparing for Change: Forecasting Water Demand Principles Into Practice: Equitable and Inclusive • Co-Moderator: Joel Reiker, Vice President of Regulatory Communications Affairs, San Gabriel Valley Water Company • Moderator: Juliet Christian Smith, Senior Program Officer, • Co-Moderator: Tim Guster, Vice President and General Water Foundation Counsel, , Great Oaks Water Company • Stephanie Green, Manager, Utility Supplier Diversity and • David Mitchell, Principal, M.Cubed Small Business and Community Outreach, CPUC • Thomas Chestnut, CEO, A&N Technical Services • Adriana Renteria, Director, Office of Public Participation, • Sean de Guzman, Chief, Snow Surveys/Water Supply State Water Resources Control Board Forecasting, Department of Water Resources • Keith Wallace, Project Manager, Department of Water • Heather Cooley, Director of Research, Pacific Institute Resources • Heather Dyer, Chief Executive Officer/General Manager, San • Maria Elena Kennedy, Water Resources Consultant, Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District Kennedy Communications • Kip Holley, Ohio State University, Equitable and Inclusive Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. Civic Engagement Utility Affordability: The Academic Perspective • Moderator: Catherine Sandoval, Associate Professor of Thursday, May 20, 2021 | 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. Law, Santa Clara University School of Law 2021 Federal and State Legislative Sessions • James Sallee, Associate Professor, University of California, • Moderator: Tami Miller, Partner, Political Solutions Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource • Rik Hull, Executive Vice President of Strategy and External Economics Affairs, National Association of Water Companies • Manny Teodoro, Associate Professor, University of • Mary Kenkel, Principal, Alliance One Consult Wisconsin, Madison, Robert M. La Follette School of Public • Adam Quinonez, Director of State Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Relations, Association of California Water Agencies • Dale Lehman, Professor of Business, Loras College, Center • Danielle Blacet, Deputy Executive Director, California for Business Analytics Municipal Utilities Association • Kathy Viatella, Executive Legislative Representative, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California • Marlaigne Dumaine, Manager of Legislative Affairs, East Bay Municipal Utilities District Thursday, May 20, 2021 | 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Networking Happy Hour Friday, May 21, 2021 | 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CWA Board of Directors Meeting
SPEAKER BIOS Danielle Blacet, Deputy Executive Director, California Municipal Utilities Association Danielle currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of the California Municipal Utilities Association. She has nearly 20 years of experience working with California public water agencies and in multi-member associations including the Association of California Water Agencies and Western Growers Association. While at Western Growers she helped establish and managed a multi-state charitable foundation program providing grants, materials and other resources for water-efficient gardens in K-12 educational institutions. Danielle also has worked in political consulting and public affairs for both statewide and national clients. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and Political Science from the University of California at Davis and a Certificate of Achievement in Computer Information Science from American River College. Thomas Chestnutt, CEO, A&N Technical Services Dr. Chesnutt is President of A & N Technical Services, Inc. He was the Principal Investigator on the Water Research Foundation project 4742 titled Probability Management for Water Finance and Resource Managers He has extensive experience in water rate development, stochastic simulation and forecasting in the fields of water policy and economic modeling. His recent projects include the following: 1) AWE study titled Building Better Water Rates for an Uncertain World (including the AWE Sales Forecasting and Rate Model enacting principles of Probability Management which can be downloaded at financingsustainablewater.org.) 2) The AWE national research project Landscape Transformation Study; 3) Water Use Efficiency Master Plans for MWD of Orange County, Upper San Gabriel Valley MWD, West Basin MWD, Central Basin MWD, Elsinore Valley MWD, the City of Oxnard, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Santa Clarita Valley Family of Water Suppliers, the City of Tucson; 4) Codevelopment of the Water Research Foundation Avoided Cost and Benefit Cost Models for Water Efficiency in Integrated Water Management; 5) Work sponsored by the US Bureau of Reclamation on advancing planning tools for atypical water resource alternatives “Planning Tools Potentially applicable to Advanced Treatment Technology”; 6) Water Budget-based Rates for the Coachella Valley Water District, Elsinore Valley MWD, Padre Dam MWD, IEUA member agencies, and the Water Research Foundation; and 7) co-lead the AWE National Water Rates Summit on Declining Demand and Revenue in Racine, Wisconsin. Dr. Chesnutt holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School, an M.S. in Technology and Science Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Economics from Kenyon College. He is a member of the American Water Works Association, the International Water Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). Dr. Chesnutt has worked with a wide range of programming and statistical languages including, STATA, Julia, R, SAS, SPSS, Gauss, MATA, Frontline
Solver, Mathematica, @Risk, CrystalBall, Rats, JCL, Basic, FORTRAN, C++, and recent applications of probability management. Dr. Chesnutt was a co-creator of the VARDEF language for enacting stochastic simulation of water systems. Dr. Chesnutt volunteers for ProbabilityManagement.org, a nonprofit promulgating standards for quantitative depictions of uncertainty—see SIPMath™ v.2 on their website. Dr. Chesnutt is a Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®, see www.certifiedanalytics.org) and an Accredited Professional StatisticianTM (PStat®) . Juliet Christian-Smith, Senior Program Officer, Water Foundation Juliet Christian-Smith oversees the Water Foundation’s Healthy Communities program, which supports projects that advance safe drinking water and climate resiliency in urban and rural communities. Juliet works closely with Water Foundation staff and partners to craft strategy, develop projects and policies, support implementation, track progress, and share lessons learned, with a focus on advancing equitable policies and practices across the water field. Juliet was previously with the Union of Concerned Scientists where she helped lead water and climate work as a Senior Climate Scientist. She also brings a comparative perspective, informed by her Fulbright Fellowship to study the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive in Portugal and her work as a Murray Darling Basin Futures Fellow in Australia. Juliet has a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. Heather Cooley, Director of Research, Pacific Institute Heather Cooley serves as Director of Research at the Pacific Institute. She conducts and oversees research on the Pacific Institute’s focus areas: water efficiency and reuse, naturebased solutions, and vulnerable communities. Previously, she worked at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory studying climate and land use change and carbon cycling. Heather received a B.S. in Molecular Environmental Biology and a Master’s degree in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley. Sean de Guzman, Chief, Snow Surveys/Water Supply Forecasting, Department of Water Resources Sean is the Chief of Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Section at the California Department of Water Resources. He has over 10 years of professional experience in hydrology, water supply forecasting, and emergency management. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Sacramento State. He oversees seasonal water supply forecasting for California’s major reservoirs, hydrologic model development, and snowpack measurements through manual snow surveys and automated snow sensors. He manages the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program made up of over 50 local, state, and federal agencies as well as private companies and public utilities. Sean is leading California’s utilization of emerging technologies and partnerships to improve forecasts of precipitation, snowpack, and runoff to support efficient water management to help estimate the impacts of climate change. He is a licensed professional engineer.
Marlaigne Dumaine, Manager of Legislative Affairs, East Bay has responsibility for a government & Community relations Municipal Utilities District group. In this managerial role, she has had the opportunity to develop a strong rapport and working relationship Marlaigne Dumaine leads the East Bay Municipal Utility with government officials, small businesses, community District’s (EBMUD) Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and associations and business groups throughout the State of directs state and federal legislative and policy issues on California. She came to the CPUC from the private sector behalf of EBMUD, and has represented utility at the state industries of telecommunications and technology. Prior to and federal level since 2006. She has worked on water, joining the CPUC Stephanie was a Product Manager with AT&T wastewater, and environmental projects and policy issues and AT&T Wireless where she led multi-disciplinary teams in for more than 30 years, both in the United States and United preparing products for market. In addition, Stephanie worked Kingdom; and built and operated one of the first stateas a strategy and policy consultant for KPMG, specializing certified mobile analytical testing laboratories in California. in the energy and communications area. Her experience She has a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Riverside and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine includes positions at an internet music start-up and a digital multimedia firm. Stephanie holds a Master’s Degree in and is a California registered lobbyist. Business Administration from Northwestern University’s Heather Dyer, Chief Executive Officer/General Manager, San Kellogg Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District from Swarthmore College. Ms. Heather Dyer is the Chief Executive Officer/General Tim Guster, Vice President and General Counsel, Great Oaks Manager at the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water Water Company District, a position she has held since January 2020. In her Tim has been responsible for legal and regulatory affairs first year as the CEO/GM, she has launched a rebranding of the District and how it operates, including the near-completion for Great Oaks Water Company, including California Public of the District’s first ever Strategic Plan and Vision/Mission, a Utilities Commission matters, since joining Great Oaks in 2007. Tim became involved with the California Water Classification and Compensation Study, and the completion Association shortly after joining Great Oaks and presently of the Upper Santa Ana River Habitat Conservation Plan serves on CWA’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee (HCP) protecting 22 native species of the Santa Ana River and holds the coveted title of Most Honorable Second Vice Watershed. Her priorities at the District continue to be longterm water supply reliability by optimizing both local (southern President. California) and Statewide projects, including the State Water Prior to Great Oaks, Tim served as General Counsel for Project. She is also developing a Climate Resilience Action publicly traded and multinational corporations with business Plan for the District that will identify, mitigate, and adapt and manufacturing operations in more than 125 countries. to the likely effects of climate change on frequency and His responsibilities ranged from litigation management, magnitude of long-term drought, catastrophic wildfire in the commercial agreements for the manufacture, sale, and District’s headwaters, and shifts in the overall ecology of the distribution of a wide range of products and services, global watershed. intellectual property portfolios, legal compliance in the U.S. and around the world, and corporate governance. Ms. Dyer joined Valley District in 2014 as a Senior Water Resources Project Manager and Fish Biologist working on development of the HCP. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Resource Biology from University of Louisiana and a Master of Science in Marine Biology from Nicholls State University where she completed research on fish assemblages of a bayou distributary of the Mississippi River. She received an Executive MBA at Claremont Graduate University in May 2019. Ms. Dyer began her career working for the USGS National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana, studying effects of climate change on freshwater and saltwater marsh ecology with implications for coastal land loss. She worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 2009 to 2013 in both Louisiana and southern California as the Santa Ana River Biologist. After a brief stint as the Fish Biologist for the Cleveland National Forest, Ms. Dyer returned to the Santa Ana River to lead development of the HCP at Valley District and implement recovery actions for the Santa Ana sucker. Stephanie Green, Manager, Utility Supplier Diversity and Small Business and Community Outreach, CPUC
Tim began his career with Roetzel & Andress, a law firm in Akron, Ohio, representing corporate and individual clients and serving as lead trial counsel in state and federal courts. Tim received his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law and B.A. from the University of Vermont. Tim and his wife Elaine live in San José. Together they have four adult children and two grandchildren. Tim and Elaine cofounded Far Out Adventure Society® in 2011 and have since led group sojourns to Scotland, Italy, France, Costa Rica, and Indonesia. Kip Holley, Ohio State University, Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement Rik Hull, Executive Vice President of Strategy and External Affairs, National Association of Water Companies Rikardo Hull brings an extensive working knowledge of state public utility law and a firm understanding of the legislative compact. He carries a wealth of legislative and legal experience to his role, helping NAWC embark on an aggressive state legislative strategy.
Stephanie Green is from the Executive Division of the California Public Utilities Commission, where she oversees the Hull previously served as a senior policy advisor to FERC General Order 156 Utility Supplier Diversity Program. She also Commissioner Rob Powelson where he provided legal, policy and strategic guidance on issues related to the Commission’s
oversight of wholesale energy markets, natural gas pipeline siting and oil pipeline rates until Powelson’s departure to join NAWC in August 2018. Prior to that, he served as Chief Counsel to Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman. Hull spent nearly a decade at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), serving in the Commission’s Law Bureau before being hired by then-Commissioner Powelson, appointed in June 2008, as his lead counsel. Mr. Hull advised Powelson on all major legal and policy issues before the Commission, notably during his tenure as Chairman from 2011 to 2015. Mr. Hull played a key role in helping to develop Pennsylvania’s markedly successful water regulatory climate. Mr. Hull earned his bachelor’s degree at Millersville University of Pennsylvania before graduating as valedictorian from Widener University School of Law. Mary Kenkel, Principal, Alliance One Consult Mary Kenkel has over 30 years of expertise in both communications and legislative affairs. Following her career on Capitol Hill, Ms. Kenkel moved to Edison Electric Institute where she worked her way up to head the media relations office. Tackling complex tax and environmental issues she helped to position the electric utility industry in a more positive light and helped member companies develop extensive consumer outreach activities. She later became Director of Public Policy, a newly created position where she identified emerging issues facing the industry. In that position, she worked with members to devise and launch novel programs where members used creative solutions integrating stakeholder and consumer concerns. Ms. Kenkel then went on to become General Manager of Federal Affairs and National Media of Cinergy which has since merged to become Duke Energy. There she worked directly with the CEO and the Vice President of Environmental Policy, working on climate and tax policy as well as other issues of importance to the company. She engaged with national environmental groups, key Members of Congress and the Administration. Following the merger with Duke, she formed her own consulting company and continued to work with Duke’s CEO on climate and tax issues, and led an initiative on energy efficiency with DOE and EPA and multiple stakeholders. She also worked with DOE on the development of a smart grid guide for utilities, consumers and public utility commissioners, and has worked with international corporations interested in building a presence in the United States. She currently is working with Liberty Utilities on all aspects of its government affairs portfolio.
Dale Lehman, Professor of Business, Loras College, Center for Business Analytics Dale Lehman is Professor of Business Administration and Director of the Center for Business Analytics at Loras College. He has taught at a dozen universities in the US, Europe, and Asia in the areas of economics and data analysis. He has authored 4 books and numerous articles in these areas, as well as being a consultant and witness in regulatory proceedings, primarily in the telecommunications industry. He has a BA in Economics from SUNY at Stony Brook, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Rochester. Tami Miller, Partner, Political Solutions A founding partner of Political Solutions and Sacramento native, Tami Miller brings an extensive understanding of the business world to lobbying. Having dedicated her career to legislative advocacy, Ms. Miller is a trusted advisor, educated and vigilant about her clients’ issues, and is proactive in promoting their interests, while keeping them well-informed about California’s ever-changing political landscape. She combines her knowledge of policy, process, and key players to provide strategic advice to, and advocacy on behalf of, a wide range of clients. Ms. Miller’s extensive experience in the business sector enables her to effectively humanize complex legislative issues, and as a result, achieve critical policy and regulatory goals important to industry. Before launching Political Solutions, Ms. Miller worked as a legislative advocate for over a decade, lobbying on behalf of the tourism industry, agricultural interests, and land development. Additionally, she previously directed the government affairs department at a large trade association, where she handled political communications and public relations, and worked on an extensive range of policy issues. Ms. Miller was also responsible for hiring and directly working with the association’s contract lobbyist, giving her valuable perspective and high standards as to what Political Solutions’ clients should expect and deserve from their legislative advocate.
Ms. Miller’s strategic expertise in assessing opportunities within government enables her to effectively influence California’s regulatory and legislative arenas to achieve the policy and regulatory goals of her clients. With over 25 years of experience, and her encyclopedic knowledge, Ms. Miller is well-equipped to address critical issues in both the complex regulatory environment and the legislative world. Her practice focuses on issues such as tourism, natural resources, energy, environment, transportation, housing, water policy, land use Maria Elena Kennedy, Water Resources Consultant, Kennedy and gaming. David Mitchell, Principal, M.Cubed Communications Maria Elena Kennedy is a water resources consultant. Maria worked with communities across the state to engage communities, improve communications, access funding, and construct successful projects.
Mr. Mitchell has in-depth knowledge of the water supply, water quality and environmental management challenges confronting resource management agencies in the western United States. His practice areas include benefit-cost analysis, regional economic impact assessment, utility rate design and financial planning, natural resource valuation, water demand forecasting, and water conservation program evaluation and planning. He has 30 years of professional experience using statistical and economic methods and models to help guide
water resources management and investment decisions. He has been deeply involved in urban water conservation planning and evaluation since he became the California Urban Water Conservation Council’s first Project Manager and Director of Research back in 1993. Serving for 15 years in this capacity, he has had a direct hand in shaping many of the policies and technical resources guiding urban conservation in California, including revisions to existing and creation of new urban water conservation Best Management Practices (BMPs), development of BMP implementation guidebooks, cost-effectiveness guidelines and models, conservation rate guidelines, and design and oversight of numerous program evaluation studies. At the state level, he has provided economic modeling support to the California Water Fix, Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Delta Risk Management Strategy, and the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. He has worked on numerous regional water planning efforts, including Sonoma County Water Agency’s Fish Habitat Flows and Water Rights Project, EBMUD’s 2040 Water Supply Master Plan, Contra Costa Water District’s Future Water Supply Study Update, Sonoma County Water Agency’s Water Supply, Transmission, and Reliability Project, and California Water Service’s 2010 and 2015 Urban Water Management Plans. Mr. Mitchell has provided written and oral testimony in legal and regulatory proceedings concerned with the valuation and pricing of water resources. Water right valuations prepared by Mr. Mitchell have supported damage judgments in legal proceedings and negotiated leases and sales of water.
Analyst with American Water. Joel graduated from the Arizona State University School of Management, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in global business with a specialization in finance. Joel is also the General Secretary and Treasurer of the California Water Association, which represents the interests of approximately 100 investor-owned water utilities regulated by the CPUC. Adriana Renteria, Director, Office of Public Participation, State Water Resources Control Board James Sallee, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics James M. Sallee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. He is a public economist who studies topics related to energy, the environment and taxation. He is a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Research Associate of the Energy Institute at Haas. He completed his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan in 2008. He also holds a B.A. in economics and political science from Macalester College. Catherine J.K. Sandoval, Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
Catherine J.K. Sandoval is a tenured Law Professor at Santa Clara University who teaches and conducts research on Communications, Energy, Antitrust, and Contract law. Her Adam Quinonez, Director of State Legislative and Regulatory scholarship analyzes legal and policy drivers of energy, communications, and water infrastructure safety, reliability, Relations, Association of California Water Agencies access, and equity gaps, and climate change. She served Adam Quinonez began his career at ACWA in 2018. As State a six-year term as a Commissioner of the California Public Relations Director, Adam oversees the state legislative and Utilities Commission, appointed by Governor Brown. As state regulatory advocacy of ACWA. His legislative issues the CPUC’s “Water Commissioner,” shed led initiatives to include state budget, energy, and water quality. Prior to joining use technology, regulation, and community engagement ACWA, Adam served in Governor Brown’s administration as to address the drought and improve safety, reliability, and Legislative Director at the Department of Consumer Affairs equity. The San Clemente dam was removed, and the Carmel where he had previously served as Assistant Legislative River watershed was restored to health, due in significant Director since 2015. At the Department of Consumer Affairs part to the CPUC Decision she authored. She led the CPUC Adam worked on a number of issues related to consumer proceeding which brought the first major water source to protection and led in the development of a medical cannabis Monterey County in a generation through a recycled water regulatory framework in California. Adam brings over a purchase agreement. As the Assigned Commissioner for the decade of state legislative experience having worked at first-in-the nation Water/Energy Nexus Proceeding, she led the several state departments and agencies in his career. Adam development of four unanimously adopted decisions to reduce received a Bachelor of Arts from U.C. Davis and lives in the embedded water in energy, and the embedded energy in Sacramento with his wife, Nicole, and two sons Harrison and water. THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL ST. JOURNAL, THE Beckett. LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, THE Joel Reiker, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, San Gabriel SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS and many other publications Valley Water Company have cited her regulatory, infrastructure, communications and antitrust law expertise. The D.C. Circuit’s 2019 Mozilla v. FCC Joel Reiker is Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for San Gabriel Valley Water Company. He has 22 years of experience decision cited Professor Sandoval’s comments to remand the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality working with investor-owned public utilities in the areas of repeal for failure to analyze the link between net neutrality cost-of-service regulation and rate design. Joel began his and public safety. Professor Sandoval hails from a trailer park career with the Arizona Corporation Commission, where he and the barrio of East Los Angeles and became the first in her spent five years working in the areas of water and energy regulation. Prior to joining San Gabriel in his current capacity family to earn a B.A. degree. She was the first Latina selected as a Rhodes Scholar, the first tenured Latina Law Professor at in 2015, Joel held the positions of Manager of Rates and SCU Law, and the first Latinx CPUC Commissioner. She earned Regulatory Accounting and Vice President - Rates and a B.A. from Yale University, a Master of Letters from Oxford Revenues with Arizona Water Company, and Regulatory University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Manny Teodoro, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs Manny Teodoro works at the intersection of politics, public policy, and public management. His research focuses mainly on U.S. environmental policy and implementation, including empirical analyses of environmental justice. In addition to academic studies, Professor Teodoro pursues a line of applied research on utility management, policy, and finance. He’s developed novel methods for analyzing utility rate equity and affordability, and works on these issues directly with governments and water sector leaders across the United States. Professor Teodoro also studies public management and bureaucratic politics, emphasizing labor markets as political phenomena and predictors of organizational performance. His award-winning book, Bureaucratic Ambition (2011, Johns Hopkins), argues that ambition shapes administrators’ decisions to innovate and to engage in politics, with important consequences for innovation and democratic governance. Professor Teodoro’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Water Research Foundation, and Cascade Water Alliance, and has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Policy Studies Journal, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Public Policy, AWWA Water Science, American Review of Public Administration, Water Security, Journal AWWA, and PS: Political Science & Politics.
Kathy Viatella, Executive Legislative Representative, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Kathy Viatella is Metropolitan’s Executive Legislative Representative. Kathy has more than 25 years’ experience in regulatory and legislative work on water policy initiatives for various organizations in the nonprofit and private sector, including work with The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund. Prior to joining Metropolitan, she worked for Resources Legacy Fund where she worked for and helped launch the Water Foundation, a private philanthropy that was instrumental in the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Kathy has deep policy expertise and proven experience in coalition building within the urban, agriculture and environmental sectors. Keith Wallace, Project Manager, Department of Water Resources Keith Wallace is a Supervising Engineer for the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the Chief of the Outreach and Engagement (O&E) Section in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Office (SGMO). Keith has more than 20 years of experience in water resources engineering, planning, and management. He has worked for DWR since 2010 and prior to joining SGMO in January 2018, he spent six years as the Project Manager for DWR’s Integrated Regional Water Management’s Implementation Grant Program. Keith has a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.