Walking All 131 Miles of SRP’s Canal System
The 131 Can Be Done team.
T
he Salt River Project (SRP) has 131 miles of canals in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, 60 miles of which have public recreational paths alongside them. This year, a group of 23 SRP employees have committed to walk all 131 miles of the canal system, calling their project 131 Can Be Done. In addition to being a healthy challenge, 131 Can Be Done is helping office staff connect with field teams and learn more about how the SRP canal system works on a dayto-day basis. In this interview, Lynn Allen, the manager of the SRP Water Contact Center, and Stephanie Berry, SRP’s manager of water scheduling and field customer service, tell Municipal Water Leader about their experiences walking SRP’s canals and how it has informed their work. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.
16 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
Stephanie Berry: I’ve been with SRP for just over 20 years. I started on the power side in the Residential Contact Center. I have worked in a few other divisions, including outage management; M-Power operations, our prepaid electric department; and customer accounting. I moved to water scheduling and subdivision services last year. Municipal Water Leader: What is the Water Contact Center? Lynn Allen: It is a 24/7 customer contact center that provides the ultimate customer experience to our water customers. We handle calls from water stakeholders, the general public, and SRP personnel. We perform a variety of functions, including placing water orders, processing water payments, advising customers of their scheduled water delivery times, assisting with water issues, and scheduling customer education training meetings. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about SRP’s canal system.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SRP.
Lynn Allen: I’ve been with SRP for a little over 18 years. I started in the Residential Contact Center and then moved to a variety of different positions within SRP. I worked in community outreach, financial services, and information
technology and then moved back to customer service. Now I’m the manager of the Water Contact Center.
