Special Guests

WEF President-Elect Ifetayo Venner will represent the Water Environment Federation at Texas WaterTM 2022.

Venner is a Professional Engineer and Envision Sustainability professional with Arcadis, a global design and consultancy firm for natural and built assets. She is the North America Wastewater and Water Sustainability Leader.

Venner has been an active member of WEF since joining after college, participating in committees and task forces related to water resource recovery facility design, sustainability and WEF governance. She is a member of the Florida Water Environment Association and the Water Environment Association of Texas.

Venner is a licensed professional engineer in Florida and Texas. She has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from McGill University, a master’s degree in environmental engineering and science from Stanford University and an MBA (with a concentration in management and sustainability) from the University of South Florida.

Heather Collins, vice president of the American Water Works Association, will represent AWWA at Texas WaterTM 2022.

Collins manages the operation and maintenance of all Metropolitan water treatment plants. She oversees 300 employees, an $84 million budget, ensures performance monitoring, and develops plant improvement programs and the start-up of new treatment plants and processes.

Prior to Metropolitan, Collins served as Regional Engineer the California Department of Public Health, Drinking Water program, overseeing drinking water regulations for the State of California’s public water systems, together with advancing watereuse in the region.

Collins is a Registered Civil Engineer and licensed Water Treatment Operator. She currently serves as an AWWA Association Director, representing the California-Nevada Section. She is a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona & Loyola Marymount University with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. More recently, Collins has led the regulatory and permitting efforts for Metropolitan’s $3.4 billion regional recycled water program, a water purification project to beneficially reuse water currently discharged to the Pacific Ocean for recharge of regional groundwater basins.

Texas WaterTM 2022 opens with remarks from Robert Puente

Robert R. Puente, San Antonio Water System President and CEO, will provide the keynote address during Texas Water’s Opening Session at 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 5.

Puente, SAWS President and CEO since May 2008, is the longest-serving leader of one of the nation’s largest utilities delivering water and wastewater services to over 1.8 million consumers.

During his tenure, SAWS has achieved the highest bond rating in its history, been named a Leading Utility of the World and constructed one of the largest inland desalination plants in the nation. Under Puente’s leadership, San Antonio also has gone from being almost entirely reliant on the Edwards Aquifer for drinking water to experiencing the greatest diversification of its water supply in city history. Those efforts include the completion of the Vista Ridge pipeline, the most ambitious publicprivate utility partnership in Texas history, which provides San Antonio with 50,000 acre-feet of water annually.

Prior to SAWS, Puente served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1991-2008 and was Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, where he was instrumental in crafting landmark legislation regarding water management.