Municipal Water Leader June 2022

Volume 9 Issue 6

June 2022

Ted Cooke of the Central Arizona Project: Dealing With Shortage and Envisioning Future Supplies

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Ted Cooke of the Central Arizona Project: Dealing With Shortage and Envisioning Future Supplies

Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by an American company established in 2009.

Jeff Kightlinger Contributing Editor jeff.kightlinger@municipalwaterleader.com

STAFF:

Contents June 2022 Volume 9, Issue 6

5 T he Power of Creative Thinking

By Kris Polly

20 H DR’s Leslie Tice: Making Environmental Planning More Than an Afterthought

6 Ted Cooke of the Central Arizona Project: Dealing With Shortage and Envisioning Future Supplies

26 N ick Lehnhoff of A&W Coatings: Rehabilitating Service Water Pipes at Mansfield Mill

14 J ohn Robinson of Strategic Value Solutions: Opening Possibilities Through Value Engineering

32 H ow 120Water Helps Water Systems Comply With the Lead and Copper Rule and Other Water Quality Requirements 38 JOB LISTINGS

Copyright © 2021 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty

by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

4 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

SUBMISSIONS:

Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions; the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING:

Municipal Water Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or kris.polly@waterstrategies.com or Tom Wacker at tom.wacker@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION:

Municipal Water Leader is distributed to all drinking water and wastewater entities with annual budgets or sales of $10 million per year or greater as well as to members of Congress and committee staff and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Municipal Water Leader in electronic form, please contact us at admin@waterstrategies.com. municipalwaterleader.com /MuniWaterLeader

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COVER PHOTO:

Ted Cooke, General Manager, Central Arizona Project.

Photo courtesy of the Central Arizona Project.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CENTRAL ARIZONA PROJECT.

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Jeff Kightlinger, Contributing Editor Elaine Robbins, Copyeditor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator Tom Wacker, Advertising Coordinator Eve Giordano, Media Assistant William Polly, Media Assistant Milo Schmitt, Media Assistant Amanda Schulz, Media Assistant

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The Power of Creative Thinking

By Kris Polly

C

limatic phenomena, project constraints, and environmental and water quality regulations—these issues and many more pose constant challenges to municipal water agencies across the United States. Luckily, professionals in our field are always thinking of new ways to address them. In this issue, we feature stories of long-term planning, value engineering, integrated planning, new digital services, and other creative approaches to the challenges of the municipal water field.

As a junior holder of Colorado River water rights in Arizona, the Central Arizona Project (CAP) is one of the entities most affected by the recent cuts in Colorado River water deliveries. In a cover interview with Municipal Water Leader Contributing Editor Jeff Kightlinger, CAP General Manager Ted Cooke tells us about the water conservation efforts of the Drought Contingency Plan and the 500+ Plan and discusses the efforts that will be needed in the future, including new agreements, adaptive management, and the identification of new water supplies.

The Missouri-based firm Strategic Value Solutions (SVS) is in the business of value engineering—a fascinating discipline that uses out-of-the-box thinking to save organizations time and money. Principal and Executive Vice President John Robinson explains how, by bringing a team of senior-level subject-matter experts together in a workshop format to challenge clients’ project assumptions, constraints, and criteria, SVS can identify new solutions to the problems clients are trying to solve.

Leslie Tice, the national environmental director of HDR’s water business group, also seeks to save clients time and money by changing their thinking. By addressing environmental work early and integrating it into the standard planning process, clients can avoid costly delays and the need to backtrack.

A&W Coatings recently rehabilitated a large, corroded service water pipe at International Paper’s Mansfield Mill.

Project Engineer Nick Lehnhoff tell us about how A&W used Warren Environmental epoxy to repair the pipe and rapidly return it back to service.

120Water provides cloud-based software and digital sampling kits to help utilities across the nation execute water safety, compliance, and wastewater monitoring programs.

We speak with cofounder and CEO Megan Glover about the company’s business model and services.

Delivering clean, high-quality drinking and service water while also protecting the environment involves many challenges. The creative thinking of the water professionals we feature this month, however, is strong evidence that we can and will continue to face up to them. M Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He can be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Ted Cooke of the Central Arizona Project: Dealing With Shortage and Envisioning Future Supplies

The CAP Canal, near milepost 13.

T

an industrial engineer in an electronics manufacturing plant.

But there was a mix-up, and when I reported to work, they said, “Well, we have this job for you as a financial analyst.”

Thirty years later, a big part of my job is still finance, but I have also worked in operations and project development.

After I had worked at CAP for 16 years, the general manager job became vacant, and I applied for it. I was hired as the interim general manager, and in 2016, after I had done that for a year, I was selected as the general manager.

Jeff Kightlinger: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Jeff Kightlinger: How has your finance background helped you be successful as a general manager?

Ted Cooke: I have more than 40 years of experience in operations, finance, project management, project development, and project financing. Before coming to CAP, I worked for around 12 years at a couple of independent power development companies. I came to CAP as the head of the finance department, the kind of role that had been a large part of my previous jobs, but that was not my original career aspiration. Being a finance person was kind of an accident. I was a physics major in college, I had an MBA in operations management, and I was hired by Xerox in Los Angeles to be

Ted Cooke: From the perspective of working with the board and CAP customers, most of the business that is transacted is financially oriented: What projects are we working on, and how are they going to affect reserves and rates? That said, I don’t think that being a financial officer—or an attorney or even a water policy expert—will by itself make you a successful general manager. Fortunately, I had lots of exposure to policy people, lawyers, decisionmakers, and constituents in my earlier jobs. It was helpful to understand how those groups interact.

6 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

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PHOTO COURTESY OF CAP.

he Central Arizona Project (CAP), as a junior holder of Colorado River water rights in Arizona, is feeling the brunt of the recent tier 1 supply cuts established under the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) and triggered in 2021.

In this interview with Municipal Water Leader Contributing Editor Jeff Kightlinger, CAP General Manager Ted Cooke tells us about the collaboration that was needed to establish the DCP and to set up the new 500+ Plan and discusses the programs that will be needed after they expire in 2026.

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The elevation of Lake Mead, seen here, is the measure that triggered the provisions of the DCP and the 500+ Plan.

PHOTO BY ALEX STEPHENS, BUREAU OF RECLAMATION, LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 2.0

Jeff Kightlinger: Please tell us more about CAP and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD).

Ted Cooke: CAWCD was created in 1971 as a local agency that would contract for water with the United States and would repay the federal government for the reimbursable costs of building the CAP. It has expanded its mandate since then and now operates the CAP infrastructure and is a water delivery agency as well. Most of the time, it is simply known as CAP because it is identified with the infrastructure it operates. CAWCD delivers the portion of Arizona’s Colorado River water that is not used by senior water rights holders on the mainstem. Up until recently, that was a little more than half the 2.8 million acre-feet that Arizona is apportioned. CAP has a junior priority both in Arizona and in the lower basin, and in the current era of shortage, all the reductions to Arizona’s water supply have been taken from CAP’s supplies. Now, rather than getting a little more than half the state’s allocation, we get slightly less than half.

Jeff Kightlinger: Would you tell us what you’ve been doing to prepare for this shortage? municipalwaterleader.com

Ted Cooke: The shortage did not come as a surprise. We’ve been preparing for this for over two decades, first with the 2007 guidelines, which were basically a set of operating rules adopted by the secretary of the interior. They defined how the lower Colorado River would be operated in times of shortage and what sorts of reductions in supply would be taken by the three lower basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada). Since then, we’ve had to make some amendments and modifications. The most recent was the DCP, implemented in 2019, which increased the amount of the reductions. For the lower basin, the elevation in Lake Mead is what determines when a shortage will occur and how much it will be. There are three reduction tiers under the 2007 guidelines, and the DCP added an additional tier.

We’re doing some collaborative voluntary conservation in the lower basin states, both with each other and with the Bureau of Reclamation. Leading up to the implementation of the DCP in 2019, we were actually implementing what was later to become the new tier zero, the basic layer of reductions that would be taken under the DCP. We did that for 4 years to keep the system from going into shortage before we were formally required to do so in 2020. However, moving from tier zero to tier 1, which is happening in June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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The Salt Gila Pumping Plant, the sixth pumping plant in the CAP system, has 10 pumps with a total capacity of 2,840 cubic feet per second.

2022, is a big step, particularly for Arizona. It requires a reduction in use that is 2½ times greater than what we did to get to tier zero. But we are ready for that, too, because the decisions about what elevation would trigger tier 1, the size of the reduction in deliveries, and whose supplies would be reduced had already been made.

their buy-in. The key to reaching consensus was mitigation for the significantly affected lower-priority users, which involved water that was voluntarily contributed by higherpriority users and funding that was contributed by the state, CAWCD, and others. Mitigation is a temporary program that eases the effects over the first few years of shortage.

Jeff Kightlinger: You went through quite an elaborate process to get consensus on those plans. How were you able to bring that group of diverse stakeholders together?

Jeff Kightlinger: Please tell us about the 500+ Plan that CAWCD and the State of Arizona, along with parts of California and Nevada, recently entered into.

Ted Cooke: For about a year and a half, we had strong disagreements in Arizona, particularly between CAP—the junior priority holder and the one organization upon which all the consequences of the DCP were going to fall—and the state. But after a year and a half of wrangling, the state and CAP came together and co-led the statewide discussions.

The talks included representatives from all sectors, including legislators, cities, tribes, nongovernmental organizations, leadership organizations, irrigation districts, and developers.

From the original 200 participants, we formed a steering committee of about 40 people, and that became an effective tool for reaching consensus. We realized early on that we would not be able to get the legislature to take the necessary action without a broad consensus. We held these meetings in public, and the process garnered substantial media attention. People from throughout the state were engaged.

We ultimately got nearly unanimous approval for the DCP in both houses of the state legislature and then took it to Congress, where the same thing happened.

Then, we had to go home and implement the DCP, and that’s when the fireworks started. We knew that because of the priority system within Arizona and because central Arizona agriculture and the homebuilders and developers had the lowest-priority water rights, those groups were going to be the hardest hit. Those two sectors had lots of influence in the legislature and could effectively block the legislation, but we were ultimately successful in gaining

Ted Cooke: In addition to the specified reduction tiers, there is an adaptive provision of the DCP that requires additional actions if any monthly forecast indicates that Lake Mead may fall below a certain level over the next 2 years. We knew that condition would be met eventually, but it caught us by surprise when it was triggered in August 2021, which happened to be the same month when tier 1 was triggered for 2022. We quickly did some modeling to determine what additional actions would be needed, and we determined that it would take 500,000 acre-feet per year of additional conservation for the next 5 years. It took only 4 months to develop what became the 500+ Plan. So, while we were implementing a tier 1 shortage for the first time in 2022, we had to simultaneously implement the 500+ Plan. We’re still developing all the agreements to put the 500+ Plan in place for 2022 and 2023, the first 2 years of this 5‑year period.

The understanding is that the actions we take this year and next are not going to be effective by themselves; we’re going to have to do more. Five hundred thousand acre-feet is the minimum savings that we need to meet every year from 2022 through 2026, in addition to the reductions required under tier 1 and whatever other tiers we hit.

8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Jeff Kightlinger: So you have the 2007 guidelines, the DCP, and now the 500+ Plan, all layered on top of each other and effectively all expiring in 2026. What do you think a new agreement needs to look like in 2026? municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CAP.

The Santa Rosa turnout is the largest in the CAP system.

ADVERTISEMENT Ted Cooke: That is really the big question. We don’t just want to keep having to conserve more. That will not necessarily arrest the declines in Lake Mead, and, at some point, we will have reached the limits of what we are able to cut. The one thing that we can’t control is the hydrology— how much precipitation falls from the sky. At very low levels in the reservoirs, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell, we could eventually have a situation where the only water available is the run of the river, and there could be significant unplanned reductions, but nobody wants to get to that point. To prevent that, we need to continue engaging in adaptive management and having collaborative discussions about what to do next. Some people have the idea that we need to just start over and do something different. I think that is hubris. What do you do in the meantime, while you’re creating this new thing to replace what took more than 100 years to achieve in the first place? What’s going to happen in the interim? How do you prevent litigation and other consequences?

The time is short to get something else done by the end of 2026, particularly since we are going to have to go through an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, which doesn’t happen quickly, and we are going to have to go to Congress. There is going to be a presidential election in 2024, so the timing is not helpful. Lots of folks have already started to speculate that the guidelines and the DCP may be extended for a couple of years to give us more time. That’s not an entirely bad idea, particularly as we are constantly working on what I refer to as adaptive management.

Jeff Kightlinger: What do you think is needed from Reclamation to help get a new agreement done by 2026 or shortly thereafter?

Ted Cooke: The Biden administration quickly put seasoned water professionals into key spots in the U.S. Department of the Interior, people that most of us know fairly well.

I think the major challenge right now—something that the federal government can do best—is to facilitate the conversation between the upper basin and lower basin states, tribal users, and nongovernmental organizations.

We need to develop a common understanding of the issues that are going to get in the way, whether we start over or continue adaptive management. We need to agree on things such as how much water the Colorado River has and the appropriate arrangement between the upper and lower basins. To agree on that for the next 10, 20, or 50 years, those fundamental differences of opinion need to be resolved.

Jeff Kightlinger: You’ve been at the helm of CAP for the last 7 years, a pretty tumultuous time in which we have really started to see the effects of climate change and shortage.

What is your vision for the future? municipalwaterleader.com

CAP´s Superstition Mountains recharge facility in northern Pinal County, Arizona.

Ted Cooke: The type of shortage that we’re having on the Colorado River right now may be the new normal. There was always the idea that if we were going to build the CAP infrastructure, we wanted to use it for other things as well, so from the very beginning, CAP was oversized. The consensus is that we need to use this excess capacity to put more water in the CAP aqueduct at some point. Well, that point is now. While we are working on conservation, we also need to think about finding new supplies. We call this augmentation. Can we find a way to use treated water that is currently going into the ocean? Can we build a desalination plant to treat ocean water and bring it here? Can we import water from other areas of the country that have a surplus? These things sound insurmountable and incredibly expensive, and they are, but so was the construction of the CAP or of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. We thought that we’d never have enough money or political willpower to do these things, but we did them, so we can’t dismiss any of those types of solutions. During the term of the next set of guidelines, we’re going to reach the end of our ability to conserve, and we have to have these other things in place. It takes time to build a plant, develop infrastructure, or work your way through all the environmental and contractual issues involved in building a desalination plant in Mexico or a pipeline from Missouri.

We have to start working on that stuff now so that when our ability to conserve hits the limit, these other projects have become viable. That’s going to be our focus over the next 10 years. The longer we wait, the longer there’s going to be a gap between those two things. M Ted Cooke is the general manager of the Central Arizona Project. For more about CAP, visit cap-az.com.

June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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John Robinson of Strategic Value Solutions: Opening Possibilities Through Value Engineering

SVS's value engineering process brings together a team of subject-matter experts for a high-intensity workshop lasting anywhere from a few days to several weeks.

T

he discipline of value engineering applies a resultsoriented methodology to find cost savings and optimized solutions to infrastructure project designs. In this interview, Municipal Water Leader speaks with Strategic Value Solutions (SVS) Principal and Executive Vice President John Robinson about what an independent dream team of experts can bring to the project design process.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the history of SVS and the services you offer. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF SVS.

John Robinson: I got into the value engineering business about 35 years ago. I joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers here in Kansas City as an engineering intern, but within a few months, I was offered a permanent position in the district’s value engineering office. This was a fantastic experience, and I quickly gained a passion for what can be

accomplished through the value engineering process. I stayed with the Army Corps for about 7 years before joining a municipal engineering design firm headquartered in Seattle.

I served as a value engineering project manager and team leader for the firm for 5 years before starting a new value engineering consulting firm with two of my close friends and mentors. Our firm, Robinson, Stafford & Rude, became one of the top value engineering consulting firms in the United States. After several great years in this partnership, my wife and I became fully dedicated to growing SVS into a worldclass value consulting firm. As you can see, my whole career has been dedicated to the value industry and helping project owners maximize the value of their infrastructure projects by offering them alternatives to achieving the required functions at the lowest capital and life cycle cost.

ADVERTISEMENT John Robinson: I started SVS in 2000, working at it part time during my time at Robinson, Stafford & Rude. In 2002, my wife, Korene Robinson, joined SVS full time and assumed the role of president. In 2005, I left my other partnership to join Korene, who continued to serve as SVS’s principal and president, to focus all our energy on growing SVS. Our business took off, and we found ourselves needing to add employees. Over the years, we’ve really focused our business on infrastructure, including water, wastewater, highways, bridges, dams, levees, vertical infrastructure, hospitals, and governmental buildings. We have an extremely broad spectrum of project experience that includes almost any kind of project in the built environment. Today, we have 22 employees, and we’ve nearly doubled in size every year for the last 3 or 4 years.

Even during the COVID‑19 pandemic, our business grew, which is surprising when you consider that our entire business model revolves around conducting workshops in conference rooms with teams of subject-matter experts.

We quickly adapted our workshops to a virtual format.

Fortunately, probably 50 percent of our work is now carried out in person again, but we’re still doing some fully virtual and hybrid workshops. While value engineering is still our primary business line, we have also expanded our services to include a suite of other value-adding services, such as risk management, construction planning and analysis, construction cost analysis, independent technical reviews, and organizational optimizations.

Municipal Water Leader: How would you define value engineering, and how does it differ from the services that other engineering or consulting firms might provide?

John Robinson: Value engineering is a misunderstood term.

Most companies in engineering, design, and construction management believe that they’re doing value engineering at some level. However, in many cases, their form of value engineering is really just cost cutting. Further, many owners believe they are already paying their designers to give them the best project, but in our experience, owners really do not want to pay designers what it would really cost them to explore all the options. Design budgets and hours are typically limited such that designers need to find the first solution that is acceptable to the owner, which is rarely the optimal solution. Value engineering provides a time-efficient and cost-effective way to further optimize the design solution and give the owner and designer other options to achieve the project goals.

The value engineering process is specifically designed to look for solutions that increase value by assessing the performance of the project functions and the resources it takes to achieve those functions. This is accomplished using a specific, structured process. One of the key steps is function analysis. This is something most engineering and construction firms don’t do. It takes a lot of practice to get good at it—to municipalwaterleader.com

really be able to look at a given project and understand its specific functional requirements. These functions come from focusing on what the project must do to be successful rather than how to do it. It is human nature to jump in and solve the problem, but unfortunately, we often don’t fully understand the problem. Function analysis changes the team’s perspective and makes sure we are solving the right problem. Once we have clarity on what the project needs to do, then we ask the question, “How else could that function be performed?”

The team is encouraged to challenge project assumptions, constraints, criteria, standards, and so on to expand the potential solution set. Then, they select the ideas that offer the greatest value improvements and present them to the owner and designer. One of the key lessons that I have learned is that if you want to be helpful to the project team, bringing new ideas to the table is essential.

Municipal Water Leader: At what point in the process does value engineering come in?

John Robinson: The early stage of a project is the most opportune time to engage value engineering. Many years ago, we launched a process called value planning. We find that it is extremely helpful to lay out all the possibilities to owners and design teams early in a project’s development, before a lot of decisions have been made. Ideally, we’re brought in during the planning stages of the project, during conceptualization, when there’s still a lot of room to look at alternatives. Historically, though, value engineering has predominantly been used at the 30–35 percent level of design, when the design is pretty well defined but there are still opportunities for optimization.

Sometimes, it is used at the 65–75 percent level of design, when the focus is more on optimizing design details and looking for constructability-related issues. We have also adapted the value process into more of a constructabilityreview approach in which we look at construction planning, construction phasing, and the packaging of projects and think about how the project is going to get built. We also look for obstacles or risks that haven’t been considered so that the project team can address them.

We have found that the process works best when it is conducted by a team that is independent of the design team, so that the project can be seen with fresh eyes. We look for senior-level experts, typically with a minimum of 15–20 years of professional experience. We bring those subject-matter experts together in a workshop format.

Going through this defined process is a high-intensity effort that can take anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks, depending on the size and complexity of the project.

Municipal Water Leader: Who are some of your clients, particularly in the water, wastewater, and storm water fields?

John Robinson: We work with federal, state, and municipal clients. We do a lot of work with the Army Corps on its June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT civil works projects, such as flood control, coastal resiliency, and ecosystem restoration projects. We also work for water and wastewater districts around the country. We are currently doing quite a bit of work with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and over the years we have worked with the San Jose–Santa Clara Wastewater District and the Cities of Los Angeles, New York, Portland, and San Diego, just to name a few. We also work with municipalities throughout Canada.

Municipal Water Leader: How does function analysis work, and what kinds of results does it produce?

John Robinson: First, we review the project documentation, then we ask the design team to present its design and help us understand the rationale behind its design decisions. We, the value engineering team, then take a step back and try to describe in simple language—using two words, a verb and a noun—exactly what this project must do. That’s not an easy task for subject-matter experts, such as engineers, architects, and scientists, but it can provide focus and clarity to the team. Trying to find the right two words starts to open up new ideas, and occasionally, you realize that the function is not what you initially thought it would be.

One example that comes to mind is a project that involved the replacement of a historic hydropower plant.

When we asked the team to explain what this project must do, it seemed obvious that the function of the project was to generate power. But as we talked about and scrutinized the project, it became evident that the real issue wasn’t generating power at all, but protecting water rights. The client wanted to make sure that this water could be used for municipal and irrigation purposes, but to preserve the water rights, the water first had to be used for power generation. If it wasn’t, the client would lose the rights.

There was an awful lot of effort being put into optimizing and maximizing the efficiency of this hydropower plant when, in reality, the client only needed it to generate enough power to pay for the maintenance. They were spending extra money on high-efficiency turbines that required a lot of maintenance. This realization allowed us to specify a more robust turbine that would have lower long-term maintenance costs.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us another example of those two-word descriptions?

16 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

John Robinson: We generally work on larger and more complex projects. We find a lot of opportunity in situations in which there are self-imposed constraints. One example that comes to mind is a highway project we evaluated that involved taking a road up and over railroad tracks. The owner stipulated that the project had to stay within the existing road right of way. The client planned to put the road up on an embankment with 25- to 30‑foot retaining walls on either side of the roadway to get it up and over the railroad track.

This is also a good example of the value of focusing on the right function to solve the right problem. It would be easy to say the function of the retaining walls was to retain earth, but more insight came from realizing that the function of the retaining walls was to avoid acquisition by limiting footprint.

Realizing this led the team to challenge the constraint that had been placed on the design team and ask the question, “What if we didn’t limit the footprint?” The team evaluated an idea involving the use of simple sloped embankments. The team found that the idea would require only about a 1‑acre take of land—a 20‑foot-wide strip. Our insight allowed the owner to make an informed decision about whether to spend $10 million on retaining walls or go through the process of acquiring 1 acre of farmland.

Municipal Water Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?

John Robinson: There are so many ways of solving a problem. Often, owners and designers decide on a solution early on, one that is heavily influenced by real and perceived constraints. In many cases, project owners could benefit from stepping back to allow a brief window for divergent thinking before committing to a specific direction. We bring together high-end experts whom most owners couldn’t afford to have on the team for the full duration of the design. Getting the input of these experts through a value engineering workshop is an incredibly cost-effective way to optimize the project design and achieve better solutions and cost savings over the life of a project. Most importantly, it gives the design team and owners additional information that will allow them to proceed with greater confidence in their project decisions. M John Robinson is a principal and the executive vice president of Strategic Value Solutions. He can be contacted at john.robinson@svs-inc.com or (816) 877‑8882.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF SVS.

John Robinson: Treat water is one example. Our team might then ask, “What exactly are we treating?” and the conversation would take off from there. We focus on the specific objectives that the client is trying to achieve. The more specific the team’s understanding of what must be accomplished, the more meaningful are the ideas generated by the team.

Municipal Water Leader: What kinds of projects are most in need of your help? Are there certain characteristics of a project that make it particularly appropriate for value engineering?

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HDR’s Leslie Tice: Making Environmental Planning More Than an Afterthought

Bedrock milling stations—granite outcrops used by people in prehistoric times to process nuts and seeds—seen near the site of the Borel Hydroelectric Project in Kern County, California, November 2021. Southern California Edison, which owns and operates the project, plans to file an application for the surrender of the project's license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. While there are many companies that do hydroelectric licensing work, HDR is one of the few that have experience in decommissioning as well.

I

20 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Leslie Tice: I am the national environmental director of HDR’s water business group. I came to HDR 5 years ago as the Northern California environmental leader.

Before that, I served in various roles at other consulting firms, including those of project manager, team manager, practice leader, and environmental planner. My technical background is in navigating and interpreting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I have 23 years municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO BY JAY LLOYD, HDR.

n her 23 years as an environmental program specialist and in roles such as chapter director in the California Association of Environmental Professionals and board member and membership chair of the National Association of Environmental Professionals, Leslie Tice has learned a key lesson: that integrating environmental considerations early in the planning and design processes can save agencies and applicants time and money. As the national environmental director of HDR’s water business group, Ms. Tice works to make that happen for the company’s clients. In this interview, she explains how managers can avoid pitfalls that come from delaying basic environmental questions.

ADVERTISEMENT of experience completing impact analyses; conducting environmental program management and related regulatory processes; and finding ways to help my clients navigate environmental requirements and, ideally, minimize effects on the environment.

Municipal Water Leader: What kinds of projects do you usually work on?

Leslie Tice: I’ve typically worked on infrastructure projects, including private development, water and power utility projects, water storage and conveyance projects, flood management projects, federal facilities, transportation infrastructure, power and renewable power facilities, and even astronomical research facilities in Hawaii. More recently, I have managed environmental programs. For instance, I advise the Santa Cruz Water Department on a range of the projects that it manages. HDR has been working with the department since 2017 to help develop its overall water capital improvement program, including all its projects, and I am HDR’s environmental lead for this work. I also work with Santa Clara Valley Water District on its watershed programs. HDR is currently preparing a complex environmental impact report for Santa Clara’s Fish and Aquatic Habitat Collaborative Effort project, looking to balance necessary habitat enhancements with water supply commitments. I often work on projects that are expected to be litigated, that require interpretation of policy, that are controversial, or that require us to engage with the public or stakeholders at a deeper level. I like the projects in which you don’t always know how you’ll get to the outcome.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the sorts of problems, delays, or extra costs that project planners can run into if they’re not proactive with environmental work?

Leslie Tice: I think that the large majority of environmental work is done in a less-than-ideal fashion. Often, the environmental work is under its own task order, meaning that it occurs after a feasibility study and an alternatives screening have been completed, the project has been defined, a lot of decisions have already been made, and money has been spent.

As a result, environmental professionals come in to execute an already-defined scope into which we haven’t had input. If, on the other hand, environmental professionals are able to get in earlier, we may be able to streamline the process or shift key project variables to avoid environmental triggers.

Some of the pitfalls that I see are additional costs and schedule delays related to inappropriate team formation or the need to backtrack. A good example of this backtracking is having to redo an alternatives screening that was considered complete during feasibility planning. NEPA and CEQA both require considering a reasonable range of alternatives, but the alternatives screenings required by NEPA and CEQA don’t necessarily align with the ones performed by most clients municipalwaterleader.com

During the 2018 Delta Fire, approximately 30 miles of Pacific Power's Line 2 and Line 14 were destroyed. During the fire cleanup and rebuilding effort, a team of HDR archaeologists worked to identify and protect important archaeological resources, including a prehistoric rock art site, the remains of an ethnohistoric Wintu dancehouse, and several historic cemeteries.

during feasibility and early planning. However, that’s not to say that they cannot be aligned. When a scope of work is defined without proper environmental screening, unnecessary studies are often prescribed; technical specialties are unnecessarily brought in or inadvertently omitted; additional levels of effort are recommended simply to avoid the risk of the unknown; and considerations for one task order or phase are disconnected from the next, leading to inefficiency and causing the opportunity to look at the big picture across planning phases to be missed. It’s natural for a technical specialist to second-guess or want to revalidate prior work and decisions. It’s this friction that breeds conflict.

Municipal Water Leader: Are there specific laws or regulations that your clients usually run into issues with?

Leslie Tice: It’s not a particular environmental regulation but the process. There’s an assumption that a project owner can’t start considering potential environmental impacts until a certain threshold is reached or early planning is June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Pinflags identify new plantings in the Santa Cruz Water Department’s Canham Meadows restoration project, seen here in March 2022.

A temporary bypass pipe reduces water flow onto the restoration area until the plantings are well established.

complete. Even if environmental considerations or input are not specifically mentioned in a scope of services, an early environmental screening to answer basic questions should be the norm. I can attest that engineers and environmental planners can in fact communicate and work together, although I realize this is a controversial position. The environmental clearance process is intended for this type of adaptive planning. It could be as simple as having one extra person sitting at the table or looking at the feasibility study or design assumptions.

Municipal Water Leader: So the issue is that an organization gets to an advanced stage of a project and suddenly realizes, “Oh, this construction isn’t going to be compliant with regulations”?

22 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Municipal Water Leader: What approach have you developed to help people avoid these problems?

Leslie Tice: Conceptually, environmental integration consists in building the basic environmental functions into every stage of planning and implementation, starting from before the project or activities are fully defined. Some regulations, including NEPA and CEQA, identify an activity as a project only when the activity is substantively defined and funding is established, but sometimes it is still worthwhile to start that conversation early. This approach is particularly important when there will be downstream considerations municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO BY SHELLY AUSTIN, HDR.

Leslie Tice: The alternatives screening process is an example that’s easy to grasp. When a project is conceptualized, an agency or developer considers alternatives to find the best way to achieve its goals. Is the pipeline above the ground or below, made of PVC or galvanized steel, 24 inches in diameter or 36, does it take this route or that? This alternatives screening is typically much broader than what the environmental triggers would require. Does the pipeline run down the road or adjacent to it; does it cross water bodies, and how; what are the land uses; are there sensitive species, historic resources, or tribal interests along the route? Often, environmental factors are only

considered, at least at any substantive level, much later in the process. However, these two lines of thinking can be brought together and considered collectively. By bringing in a qualified environmental person or team early, a project owner can not only avoid the need to validate or redo their alternatives screening, but they also gain clarity about the level of environmental review they’ll need, the stakeholders they might want to engage, the studies and permits that will be required, and the timelines. They can better scope the project and make the process more predictable. If there are any issues or even fatal flaws with an alternative, those can be screened out early. Simply by shifting up a required step in the process and merging it with another, a project owner can avoid mistakenly advancing design on an undesirable alternative and thus save substantial amounts of money.

ADVERTISEMENT such as alignment with related projects, public engagement, right-of-way services, technology integration, and potential opposition to the project or activity.

Municipal Water Leader: Are municipal water projects vulnerable to specific pitfalls that managers need to look out for?

Municipal Water Leader: Would you provide an example of how that works?

Leslie Tice: Municipal projects always have their challenges because they involve a lot of stakeholders and affect people at a local, personal level. The local community has expertise on the resources in its area, and regulators are attuned to their local municipalities. Identifying environmental impacts is always an important part of funding applications and is critical for setting a project owner up for later phases of a project. Biological, cultural, and tribal issues are also prevalent. All these factors are included in HDR’s standard environmental clearance process. As we’ve discussed, it is important to build those considerations in early rather than pushing them off to a separate or later phase of planning. One of the things that poses the highest risks for a project is not allowing the time needed to clear a project environmentally. Early and effective environmental integration can save a tremendous amount of time and, ultimately, money.

Leslie Tice: One example that resulted in some real savings relates to a 9‑mile water pipeline project. We initiated the development of the project definition that would be used for the environmental impact report earlier than the client was comfortable getting design initiated.

We saw this as a way to bring specificity to the questions we needed the design team to answer, meaning the process was flipped so that environmental questions drove the design from early on. Turning the project definition into a collaborative writing exercise allowed the team to move the project forward. Throughout the planning process and the development of the environmental impact report, we continually engaged with the design team. It was more of a partnership model, wherein our environmental team reviewed the design; the design team reviewed each iteration of the environmental document; and the two teams engaged regularly to discuss physical changes, the results of technical studies, the advancement of the design, the results of property-owner outreach, and so on. The goal was to advance the project while avoiding surprises. As we round out the CEQA process, we have stayed on schedule and under budget, we have adapted to design changes, and we have avoided team conflicts that could easily have arisen.

Other examples that come up on a regular basis are projects for which early environmental engagement can minimize the need for further environmental review or even make it unnecessary. Our environmental team advises our way out of work all the time. We consider this a good thing, since our clients benefit and ultimately trust us.

PHOTO COURTESY OF HDR.

Municipal Water Leader: To what degree does it help you to have relationships with the local or state regulators?

Leslie Tice: Having local relationships is really important and often the key to successfully getting a project approved.

That said, even when you do not have a relationship with those regulators, having an integrated approach in which you address the environmental issues or requirements specific to each regulator avoids putting them in the tough position of needing to demand changes to the process or additional studies before they can approve the project or issue a permit. That situation pits the regulator against the project owner, which is almost always avoidable with a credible relationship. It’s important to build those relationships for the future, as well. It helps to understand the regulators’ processes. The environmental team can, of course, help with this. municipalwaterleader.com

Municipal Water Leader: Can you put some numbers on how much money and time clients can save by building environmental considerations into an early stage in the process?

Leslie Tice: We’re talking about savings tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the low end and commonly millions for larger projects. We’re talking about months to years saved. Those savings are measured over contract cycles. If you’re able to provide some predictability to the process of how decisions are made at the city council and state board levels, you have a much more defined process. Oftentimes, the environmental review stage is where a project owner can see whether their project goals are even achievable—this is where fatal flaws are often revealed. Prescribing the scope based on an early, integrated approach rather than relying on a consultant’s interpretation of a request for proposals; avoiding unnecessary studies; initiating and aligning design and environmental alternatives screenings—these things allow project owners to significantly streamline their processes, minimize surprises, avoid redundant efforts, and have more control over their overall processes and expenditures. On the consultant side, it helps us understand what the client needs and what their priorities are. It’s a much more productive way of engaging. M Leslie Tice is a certified environmental professional and the national environmental director of HDR’s water business group. She can be contacted at leslie.tice@hdrinc.com.

June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Nick Lehnhoff of A&W Coatings: Rehabilitating Service Water Pipes at Mansfield Mill

The existing 54-inch steel raw water suction pipeline was heavily deteriorated by abrasion and corrosion. Here, it can be seen before and after being rehabilitated using Warren Environmental’s 301-14 high-performance epoxy.

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hen International Paper needed to rehabilitate corroding steel pipes that carry water to cool operations at its Mansfield Mill, it called in A&W Coatings. Project Engineer Nicholas Lehnhoff spoke with Municipal Water Leader about the project’s unique challenges and the benefits that the Warren Environmental epoxy that A&W uses could bring to the facility.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

26 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Nick Lehnhoff: We’ve actually worked at that mill twice, in 2019 and in 2021. Last year, we were hired to rehabilitate the pipe that carries water from a pond to cool the mill’s various operations. The pipes are 100–125 feet long, and 24‑inch risers come out of the pipe and go to different parts of the mill. Suction lines draw water in from a pond, and grit can enter those lines. As the grit is sucked up out of the riser, it creates a sort of vortex. The grit acts as an abrasive, and rust forms and builds up in the pipe, which also causes corrosion. We found that the steel pipes were heavily deteriorated in spots. The first time we worked there, we actually had to patch a few spots with plates. First, we removed the buildup in the pipe with high-pressure washers.

Once we got most of it off, we blasted the pipe with abrasive municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF A&W COATINGS.

Nick Lehnhoff: I have been with A&W for a little over 2 years. I started as an intern. After obtaining my degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato, I transitioned into a full-time role and have been with the company ever since. Now, I am a project engineer. I get involved with a project from the second it comes in the door. I create the estimate, work with the client to develop a work plan, and then schedule the work.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the pipeline rehabilitation project you completed for International Paper Company’s Mansfield Mill?

ADVERTISEMENT to achieve the profile that we needed on the steel. Once the surface was clean, we sprayed the pipe with epoxy coating.

The 301‑14 high-performance epoxy coating protects the pipe and makes the surface resistant to abrasion. It will also protect the pipe from further corrosion.

Municipal Water Leader: Was the danger that the pipes would actually collapse?

Nick Lehnhoff: No, the pipes weren’t structurally compromised. But if the problem were not addressed, that could eventually become a concern. The company wanted to find a solution before it got to that point.

Municipal Water Leader: How did you access those worn parts of the pipes to inspect them?

Nick Lehnhoff: International Paper actually built a cofferdam around the pipes so we could access the site. We were able to get 20 feet or so into the pipes that way, because they deadheaded underground.

Municipal Water Leader: Did the mill need to shut down while you completed your work?

Nick Lehnhoff: Yes. The cooling lines are critical for the plant’s operation, so it had to shut down. We worked on a pretty tight schedule. There were 30–40 subcontractor employees working above us. One advantage of the Warren epoxy we use is that you can use it while other work is going on simultaneously because it does not contain volatile organic compounds that could affect workers. The cure time for the Warren product is usually 4–6 hours, which is relatively quick. For this job, we worked around the clock, with two crews working 12‑hour shifts. Once the epoxy was cured and we had tested and inspected the work, the plant was ready to go right back into service.

Municipal Water Leader: Did you use the same epoxy and application process in this project that you use when you coat drinking water pipes at water treatment plants?

Nick Lehnhoff: The two products are very similar. The epoxy we use for potable water is NSF approved, while the 301‑14 high-performance epoxy is not, but from an application and service rep standpoint, it’s pretty much the same.

Municipal Water Leader: How long should the International Paper expect the epoxy coating to stand up to the conditions in the pipe?

Warren Environmental’s epoxy structurally enhanced the degraded condition of the pipe, extending its service life and protecting it from abrasion and corrosion for years to come.

Municipal Water Leader: Have you heard back from the facility owner about the results?

Nick Lehnhoff: The owner was really impressed with the first scope we did in 2019, so it knew exactly what it was getting into the second time. It was reassuring to the company to know that A&W could come in as the contractor and meet the tight shutdown times and that the product would provide the durability it was looking for. M

Nick Lehnhoff: The structurally enhancing Warren Environmental product has a design life of 75 years. Some of A&W’s oldest structures are 25 years old and are still in great condition. This product provides a long‑term solution for an otherwise deteriorating pipe that would be coming to the end of its useful life.

Nick Lehnhoff is a project engineer for A&W Coatings. He can be contacted at nlehnhoff@awmain.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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How 120Water Helps Water Systems Comply With the Lead and Copper Rule and Other Water Quality Requirements

120Water’s Lead Service Line Probability Finder helps agencies and water systems use existing data to create and complete lead service line inventories.

T

o comply with a host of recent regulations, water quality professionals are turning to outside digital water companies like 120Water to help them execute water safety, compliance, and wastewater monitoring programs. Municipal Water Leader spoke with Megan Glover, cofounder and CEO of 120Water, about how more than 300 water systems across the United States use the company’s cloud-based software and digital sampling kits for everything from centralizing service line inventory data to end-to-end lead program management.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and why you started 120Water.

32 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Megan Glover: We are a digital water company. Our platform consists of cloud-based software, point-of-use kits, and services that water professionals at state agencies, private agencies, and water systems across the country use to manage water quality programs. The core of our business is municipal water systems across the United States, as well as nine statewide programs. We’ve grown from 3 employees to more than 70 today, which speaks to how critical water quality programs are to utilities across the country.

When I first launched the business, we marketed directly to the consumer, no different from other box business models like 23andMe and Everlywell that make testing available to anyone at their doorstep. As we were launching 120Water, an overwhelming amount of regulatory change was happening at the municipal and state levels in response to the Flint crisis. I recognized that water systems were having to test water more, not only on the consumer side but also for schools and daycare centers. I wanted to see if we could interest any municipal customers in our products. Sure enough, within 6 months we had landed over $300,000 in contracts directly with municipal water systems, schools, and daycare centers. That’s when we pivoted the business to focus our solutions on municipalities and facilities that were having to address these new regulatory demands. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF 120WATER.

Megan Glover: My background is not in water but in building cloud-based marketing, operations, and retail software technology. Immediately before starting 120Water, I worked in healthcare, building cloud-based technology for clinical laboratories. I started 120Water because I was a concerned water customer. In early 2016, I was horrified to watch the Flint, Michigan, water crisis unfold. I wanted to test my water, so I called my water system, but at-home consumer testing wasn’t a service it provided at the time. It referred me to an environmental lab. We launched 120Water in 2016 to bring affordable laboratory water testing to anyone who wants to test their tap.

Municipal Water Leader: What does 120Water do?

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120Water’s software and kits are used to streamline and track sampling and communication programs.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the significance of the company’s name?

Megan Glover: When we first launched 120Water, you could purchase our water testing kits through a subscription.

Chemistry changes constantly, both within the distribution system and at your tap, so we sent subscribers a water testing kit every 120 days. Although our business model has changed, the name has stuck.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you think the surge in demand for water quality testing is due to increased regulations or just a growing interest in public health?

Megan Glover: In our industry—state and municipal water and water in general—regulatory requirements really do mandate change, for lack of a better word. We attribute a lot of our growth in customer acquisition and the adoption of the software in our kit squarely to the regulatory landscape. That includes the passage of the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) and the mandate for every community water system in the United States to have a digital inventory of lead service lines, which is a requirement that’s never existed before.

Municipal Water Leader: What sets you apart from other companies that offer water quality testing? municipalwaterleader.com

Megan Glover: Obviously, we have competitors—the amount of funds that are going to be spent on lead programs and the identification of lead pipes is drawing competitors out of the woodwork. Environmental consulting firms generally offer more of what we call a do-it-yourself approach for customers who want a custom system that is purpose built for their needs, which requires frequent recoding and retooling. We also compete with other technology companies on what we call point solutions, in which they do a piece of what we do. What sets us apart is that we strive to be an end-to-end platform, conforming to best practices and ongoing development needs. We modeled our approach on the best practices of our 300 customers who are doing the same program.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you help water systems manage their lead removal work?

Megan Glover: We are an end-to-end platform that our customers can use to use to manage all facets of their lead programs, from getting their data into one system to applying predictive intelligence to help prioritize the work. Often, that work is a plan to replace lead pipes. We also do water quality LCR compliance sampling and remediation, which includes customer communications and public transparency.

Our customers use us as a workflow engine to get work done, from identifying lead pipes to completing the replacement June 2022 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT and sampling requirements of the rule. Alternately, we can help with just part of that process. When the City of Newark, New Jersey, recently replaced all the lead pipes in its system, it used our water testing and pitcher filter kits to provide a safe alternative for drinking water. Our distribution system automatically drop-shipped pitcher filters and replacement cartridges on a recurring cadence to ensure that customers always had access to clean, safe drinking water while their service lines were being worked on.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your current market?

Megan Glover: Right now, we are laser focused on the United States. There’s an overwhelming demand for what we do right now, given the regulatory and infrastructure landscape with the passage of the LCR and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But data management and water quality are global issues, so there’s nothing to preclude us from later expanding beyond the United States.

Municipal Water Leader: Can customers still buy test kits directly from you?

Megan Glover: Yes. Any individual can purchase a water testing kit from our website. However, I would say most of our demand comes from municipalities. Many of them either require testing or offer it to their residents through 120Water.

Municipal Water Leader: Do municipalities offer that testing for free, or do they pass on a cost to their customers?

Megan Glover: More times than not, they offer testing for free to their customers as a value-added service. It is an immense value-add to give customers peace of mind that their water is healthy. There’s also regulatory testing, which of course they must cover the cost of.

Municipal Water Leader: Aside from lead and copper, do you also test for such things as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)?

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

Megan Glover: Certainly. We are fortunate in that a lot of the goods that we use are manufactured here in the United States, but many of our suppliers rely on manufacturers across the globe to get them the materials that they need to make things like bottles and boxes, so we have seen some delays in getting our products. The great thing about the programs that we work on is that they’re highly scheduled and predictable, so we’ve started just procuring more product than we normally would to make sure that we have the supplies we need on hand. We’re also seeing costs rise about 30 percent right now, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Municipal Water Leader: Today, many companies are having trouble hiring people. Has that been a problem for you as well?

Megan Glover: Even the technology sector is not immune to the shortage of qualified talent out there. The market here in Indianapolis is highly competitive—everyone is vying for top technology talent. We’re probably better off than most, because we’ve personally not had a ton of issues filling positions, but I don’t see the situation getting better anytime soon. We’re focused not only on capturing talent but also on educating the talent that we have. We want to help them develop the skill sets that we need, anticipating that it’s not always going to be as easy to fill jobs.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you foresee the future of water quality testing and compliance? Do you think demand for testing will continue to grow?

Megan Glover: Providing clean and safe drinking water will always be a top priority for regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and for municipalities across the United States. As new variables come into play, such as the growing list of PFAS and the secondhand effects of climate change, the need for testing will continue to grow and evolve, as will the development of new technologies to treat the contaminants of concern. 120Water plans to follow along and continue adapting to the needs of the industry, serving as a go-to resource for water quality professionals now and for years to come. M Megan Glover is the cofounder and CEO of 120Water. She can be contacted at megan@120water.com.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF 120WATER.

Megan Glover: PFAS are certainly an emerging area of concern.

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Municipal Water Leader: Have you experienced any recent supply-chain issues?

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Does your organization have a job listing you would like to advertise in our pages? Municipal Water Leader provides this service to irrigation districts, water agencies, and hydropower facilities free of charge.

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METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES Salary: Dependent upon qualifications Location: Southern California Application Deadline: Positions close at 4:30 pm PST on the date stated in the job announcement Summary: Metropolitan offers very competitive salaries and excellent benefits. We seek out the best and want colleagues who embrace innovation, equity and a shared greater purpose to our region.

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GEOLOGIST Salary: $4583 - $4,708 monthly Location: Austin, TX Deadline: Open until filled Summary: Performs complex (journey-level) to advanced (senior-level) geosciences and hydrological work. Work involves conducting and overseeing the execution of technical projects to map, characterize, and model groundwater in the aquifers of the state related to the Brackish Resources Aquifer Characterization System Program.

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SENIOR ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER/ PROJECT MANAGER Salary: Dependent upon qualifications Location: Tacoma, WA Deadline: Open until filled Summary: Support environmental engineering projects involving upland and in-water sediment characterization and remediation, waterfront engineering, shoreline restoration, source control evaluations, water quality assessments, geotechnical engineering and construction management.

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38 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | June 2022

PROJECT MANAGER II Salary: Dependent upon qualifications Location: Parkersburg, WV Deadline: Until filled Summary: Designs, development and delivery of effective water transmission applications. Leads design sessions and review sessions with engineering, operations, production control team members and other members of the organization including all levels of management. Reviews and assesses vendor proposals.

Apply: https://www.nwpipe.com/careers/

FIELD SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE II Salary: Dependent upon qualifications Location: Portland, OR Deadline: Until filled Summary: Provides expert advice to the operations manager and makes recommendations that are in the best interest of Northwest Pipe Company.

Performs short- and long-term planning; reports to the operations manager and represents the best interest of Northwest Pipe Company. The field representative will perform complex supervisory, administrative and professional work in planning, organizing, and overseeing the delivery of water transmission steel pipe.

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INDUSTRIAL COATINGS PROGRAM MANAGER Salary: Dependent upon qualifications Location: Orem, UT Deadline: Until filled Summary: This role will develop a program for coatings used in lined product manufacturing at the Orem plant. Programs will maximize safety, quality, schedule completion, environmental aspects, and costs. This role is also a significant resource for engineering and sales, and must embrace and support core values of accountability, commitment, and teamwork (ACT).

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Upcoming Events June 3–6 U.S. Conference of Mayors, Annual Meeting, Reno, NV June 6–7 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Strategic Communications: H2O Workshop, Milwaukee, WI June 12–15 American Water Works Association, Annual Convention and Exhibition, San Antonio, TX June 13–16 Nevada Water Resources Association, Well and Water Week, Reno, NV June 15–17 Texas Water Conservation Association, Summer Conference, Round Rock, TX June TBD North Dakota Water Users Association, Summer Meeting, Fargo, ND July 4–8 I.S. Rivers, International Conference, Lyon, France July 11–13 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association and North Dakota Water Education Foundation, Joint Summer Water Meeting and Executive Briefing, Fargo, ND July 20–22 Groundwater Management Districts Association, Summer Conference, Copper Mountain Resort, CO July 21–24 National Association of Counties, Annual Conference and Expo, Adams County, CO July 24–27 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Utility Leadership Conference, Seattle, WA July 25–27 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar, Fairmont, MT July 28 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Water Day at the North Dakota State Fair, Minot, ND August 1–3 National Conference of State Legislatures, Legislative Summit, Denver, CO August 10–12 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar/Tour, Hot Springs, MT August 23–24 Colorado Water Congress, Summer Conference, Steamboat, CO August 23–25 The Water Expo, Miami, Florida August 24–25 Kansas Water Congress, Summer Meeting, Colby, KS September 11–14 American Water Works Association, Water Infrastructure Conference, Portland, OR September 11–15 International Water Association, World Water Congress and Exhibition, Copenhagen, Denmark September 16 Agribusiness and Water Council of Arizona, H2Open Golf Tournament, Casa Grande, AZ September 19–20 Nevada Water Resources Association, Fall Symposium, Reno, NV September 26–28 National Drilling Association Convention, Pittsburgh, PA September 26–29 National Rural Water Association, WaterPro Conference, National Harbor, MD

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