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Andy Fecko: PCWA’s Plans for Resilience and Rebuilding
PCWA's Hell Hole Reservoir and Dam.
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lacer County Water Agency (PCWA), located on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains 30 miles northeast of Sacramento, California, provides water to about 35,000 treated water customers and around 4,500 irrigation customers. The region has a varied history that includes mining and some of the earliest transnational shipments of fresh fruit on the transcontinental railroad. While some of PCWA’s infrastructure dates back to mining days, the agency is aggressively pursuing certification and funding for new storage, delivery, and recreational infrastructure. In this interview, PCWA General Manager Andy Fecko tells Municipal Water Leader about how PCWA is continuing its operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic and planning to be part of the nation’s recovery when the crisis recedes.
Andy Fecko: I’ve been with PCWA for nearly 14 years. At the time I joined, the agency was in the early stages of a complex federal relicensing effort on our Middle Fork
6 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2020
municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF PCWA.
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and experience.
American River Project (MFP), which required a lot of stakeholder meetings in coordination with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other state and federal agencies. I was brought on to help organize that effort and to provide key technical background. My educational background is in fisheries biology. I was lucky enough to study under Peter Moyle, a world-renowned fisheries biologist, at the University of California, Davis. When I graduated, I went to work for Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), doing transmission-line siting work. From there, I moved to work for the State of California, doing research work on the effects of herbicides, particularly forest herbicides, on fish. When that job concluded, I moved on to the State Water Resources Control Board and learned the regulatory machine from the inside. I spent some time at the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), working on the Sites Reservoir project during the old CALFED days. PCWA hired me from DWR. I brought a lot of regulatory knowledge, scientific and technical skill on the fisheries front, and management experience from my work on the Sites Reservoir.
