Municipal Water Leader September 2015

September 2015 Volume 1 Issue 2

Delivering on the Promise to Provide a Sustainable Water Supply for Texas: An Interview With Jim Oliver

The Texans

By Kris Polly Texas is a unique place where leadership, politics, and longterm planning are part of the culture. There is a natural independence of thinking and a fearlessness—likely rooted in the state’s history—that allows Texans to take on major challenges and be successful. This is especially apparent in the water sector. Other states in our country have built tremendous water projects and have great leaders; however, if the United States were Europe, Texas would be our modern-day Germany.

This second issue of Municipal Water Leader magazine provides our readers with a sampling of the most visionary and accomplished leaders Texas has to offer. Mr. Jim Oliver is the general manager of the Tarrant Regional Water District, which provides water to over 2 million people. Jim worked to broker a historic partnership with the City of Dallas to build a 150-mile-long, 108-diameter pipeline that is big enough to drive a car through. This project will provide a secure water supply for the region for the next 50 years. Jim has been described as the ideal manager, and one can see why in reading his interview. “I hire great people, and I get out of their way.”

Mr. Bech Bruun is chairman of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB). In the 1950s, the western United States experienced a severe drought. In response, Texas formed TWDB to address water supply needs. TWDB has invested over $15 billion in water projects since then and recently approved another $4 billion for future projects. In speaking with Bech, it is clear that he has the vision and ability to lead his board in the development of the Texas State Water Plan.

When you meet Mr. Kevin Ward, general manager of Trinity River Authority, there are two things that immediately impress you: his exceptional knowledge and his high energy.

His resume reads like the accomplishments of more than one person. This is understandable, as he seems to squeeze two minutes out of every one. A planner by nature with an eye to

the future, Kevin manages Trinity’s $2.3 billion in assets and its $267 million annual budget.

Mr. Leroy Goodson is a bit of a folk hero in the western water community. He is one of those larger-than-life figures, with a gregarious personality and an infectious laugh.

As the executive director of the Texas Water Conservation Association for the last 34 years, Leroy has been at the very center of western and Texas water issues and policy. “What does Leroy say?” or “Have you talked to Leroy?” are common questions in nearly every conversation about water in Texas or working with Texas on western and national water issues.

However, the most common question now is, “Is Leroy really going to retire?” It is difficult for people to imagine working on water issues in Texas without him.

Mr. Mike Nichols, chief marketing officer of Freese and Nichols Inc., is part of a renowned engineering firm whose storied history has been intertwined with water development in Texas since the 1890s. Known for its exceptional abilities, attention to detail, and creativity, Freese and Nichols prides itself on a culture of service to its customers and to the professional development of its employees. It is the rule, rather than the exception, for individuals to work their entire career at Freese and Nichols. In Mike’s interview, it is clear that the firm’s tremendous multigenerational experience in water resources has provided it with a unique vision and ability to tackle future water supply needs. Freese and Nichols didn’t just read the history books on Texas water, it wrote them.

Kris Polly is editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader and Irrigation Leader magazines. He is also president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations, marketing, and publishing company 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 may be contacted at Kris.Polly@waterstrategies.com.

The Water and Power Report www.WaterAndPowerReport.com The Water and Power Report is the one-stop aggregate news site for water and power issues in the 17 western states.

Sign up for the free “Daily” service to receive e-mail notice of the top headlines and press releases each business day.

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Municipal Water Leader

SEPTEMBER 2015

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2 Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by Water Strategies LLC 4 E Street SE Washington, DC 20003 STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief John Crotty, Editor Valentina Valenta, Writer Robin Pursley, Graphic Designer Capital Copyediting LLC, Copyeditor SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved.

Submissions are returned only upon request.

ADVERTISING: Municipal Water Leader accepts one-quarter, half-page, and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or Municipal.Water.Leader@WaterStrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Municipal Water Leader is distributed nationally to managers and boards of directors of water agencies with annual budgets of $10 million or more; governors; state legislators in all 50 states; all members of Congress and select committee staff; and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, please contact our office at Municipal.Water.Leader@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright 2015 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources and water industry 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, 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.

COVER PHOTO: Jim Oliver, General Manager of the Tarrant Regional Water District.

(Photo provided by TRWD) Municipal Water Leader

C O N T E N T S 2

The Texans

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Delivering on the Promise to Provide a Sustainable Water Supply for Texas: An Interview With Jim Oliver

By Kris Polly

LEADERSHIP PROFILE

8

Steve Stockton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

12 Texas Water Development Board Chairman Bech Bruun

MANAGER PROFILE

16 Trinity River Authority

General Manager J. Kevin Ward

WATER ASSOCIATIONS

22 Farewell to a Great Texas

Water Leader: An Interview With Leroy Goodson

26 Gene Koontz, American Water Works Association

INNOVATORS

30 Making Steel Pipe in Saginaw

By Eric Stokes

BUSINESS LEADERS

34 Mike Nichols of

Freese and Nichols, Inc.

CLASSIFIED LISTINGS

38 Classifieds 3

Delivering on the Promise to Provide a Sustainable Water Supply for Texas:

An Interview With Jim Oliver

Jim Oliver is the general manager of the Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) in Fort Worth, Texas.

Since 1986, he has overseen all water supply operations, including the management of four major water supply reservoirs and 150 miles of water transport pipelines, for an agency that provides water to more than 2 million people in 11 north Texas counties. Mr. Oliver also oversees flood control efforts along a 40-mile stretch of the Trinity River through Fort Worth and has been instrumental in the development of an award-winning recreational trail system that stretches along the river and throughout neighborhoods across the city. He serves on the boards of numerous local and national water-related organizations.

Mr. Oliver graduated from the University of North Texas with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public administration.

Municipal Water Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke with Mr. Oliver about managing a water district charged with providing water supply and flood control operations for 2 million people, navigating a growing regulatory framework, and increasing water supplies through partnerships on projects such as the Integrated Pipeline Project (IPL) to achieve long-term sustainability.

Kris Polly: TRWD supplies wholesale water for approximately 2 million people in the western half of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Please share with our readers how TRWD accomplishes this mission, and the steps you have taken to secure future water supplies for a growing population.

Jim Oliver: We have an excellent long-term planning model. Our staff is always looking for new opportunities to develop water supply and make our existing system more reliable. We are exploring groundwater, brackish water, additional surface water, recycled water, aquifer storage and recovery, and other options. Our customers expect 100 percent reliability, and we have always been able to deliver.

We use a 50-year planning horizon because it can take decades to develop water supplies in our current regulatory climate. We have both a short- and a longterm strategy and several contingency plans along the way. In the short term, we have an aggressive and very successful conservation program that is stretching our existing supply. We are studying new supplies, like aquifer storage and recovery and additional recycled water, that may not add a significant amount of new 4

Jim Oliver, near the Main Street Bridge in downtown Fort Worth.

supply to the system but that can be put in place faster and make us more resilient. Our long-term plans include several new reservoirs, most of which we plan to build in partnership with other water suppliers in the region. Because our staff and board are in alignment, that business decision should be made based on what is best and most cost effective over a time period of several decades and not just for the current budget cycle.

We are already making investments in those long-term strategies even though they are decades in the future.

Kris Polly: Please tell our readers about the IPL. Why was this project necessary, and how can the concepts of the project apply to other parts of the country?

Jim Oliver: The IPL is absolutely vital to our system because we need additional capacity to pump water from our reservoirs in east Texas. The two pipelines we already have in place are no longer sufficient to meet the growing population, which is expected to double in the next 50 years. We always planned to build three pipelines for those reservoirs; the population now has grown to the point that we need the third. We already have some of the 150 miles of 108-inch diameter pipeline in place, and we plan to start pumping in 2020.

We also bought enough right-of-way to fit another pipeline in the same location. We are creating a future water highway, bringing supplies from the eastern part of the state where there is an abundance of water.

When we decided to expand our transmission system, Municipal Water Leader

we capitalized on an opportunity to partner with the City of Dallas, with which we already had good relationship.

Dallas has a water supply reservoir in the same area and the timing of our need for another pipeline was very similar.

A business case analysis showed us that we could build a joint pipeline that would be more cost effective, affect fewer landowners, and reduce our environmental footprint. By creating this partnership, together we have saved nearly $500 million in construction costs and more than $1 billion over the life of the project.

The majority of our major future water supply projects will be built in partnership with some other entity. We put years of effort into answering questions of ownership, joint operation, and funding with Dallas. Our successful partnership will serve as a foundation for future projects.

Kris Polly: Sustainability is a recurrent theme in water management. Would you share your views of sustainability as it applies to water supply in the Fort Worth region?

Jim Oliver: Water conservation is one of our biggest sustainability programs. We have again partnered with Dallas to provide the public with an effective conservation education campaign. All our major cities are located along the Interstate 35 and Interstate 45 corridors in the middle of the state, and new surface water supply is increasingly expensive and difficult to develop. During the hot summer months in north Texas, approximately 60 percent of the water is used for lawns. We are working hard with Dallas to teach people to conserve water. Although we have seen demand reduced by 30 to 35 percent, we hope to significantly reduce the percentage of water people use on lawns through awareness and education programs. One of the great benefits of our conservation program is that it has become a short-term water supply that allows us to postpone some projects. It can take decades to complete some of these large projects, so conservation measures allow us to pay down the debt before we begin a new project.

The district is also active in environmental stewardship.

George W. Shannon Wetlands Water Reuse Project, located near Richland-Chambers Reservoir.

Municipal Water Leader

The IPL is a $2 billion project being built in conjunction with the City of Dallas.

Our new engineering building was certified Gold Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) and had (at the time) the largest roof-mounted solar array in Texas. Our infrastructure projects have also been receiving recognition for our sustainability practices. A recent pipeline project was recognized with a Silver Rating through the Envision Sustainable Infrastructure Rating System, and the IPL is on track to receive similar, if not higher, recognition. Envision evaluates the community, environmental, and economic benefits of infrastructure projects.

Our staff is always looking for ways to be more energy efficient. We pump water from our more distant reservoirs in east Texas to closer ones in our system during times of the year when electricity is less expensive and demands are low. This saves our customers millions of dollars in pumping costs. We saw an additional opportunity to recover energy when we were discharging water into the closer reservoirs.

We recently completed a hydro-generation facility to recover energy and sell it back to the electrical grid.

TRWD’s environmental division has developed watershed management programs with landowners, industry, and local opinion leaders to protect our resources.

These efforts have improved reservoir and river water quality. We have a major wetlands project that recycles water at our Richland-Chambers Reservoir. Last year, it was honored with the “2014 Best of the Best” by Engineering News-Record. The project redirects water from the Trinity River into Richland-Chambers Reservoir to provide additional water supply to our growing communities.

Wetlands systems are wonderful natural cleansers or recyclers of water. We are already working on a similar project at our Cedar Creek Reservoir and will build it in stages as demand grows. Once both facilities are operational, they will supply about 30 percent of our expected demand.

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Kris Polly: What are the top challenges now and in the future for TRWD, and what challenges should all municipal water providers start thinking about?

A conceptual drawing of Trinity River Vision’s Panther Island.

Kris Polly: In 1997, the State of Texas passed Senate Bill 1, which initiated a statewide water planning effort.

How has this statewide water planning been helpful?

Jim Oliver: Before Senate Bill 1, most entities across the state were doing their water planning independently.

Water providers weren’t always sharing information, nor were they talking to others involved in the water industry in the region. Senate Bill 1 helped develop two-way communication between water providers, industry leaders, small businesses, environmentalists, and other stakeholders.

Senate Bill 1 significantly changed the way we think about water resources planning.

Kris Polly: Congress may be considering additional Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) legislation.

What is your message to Congress?

Jim Oliver: Congress needs to develop a workable method to distribute funds for much-needed projects.

WRDA was created to advance the quality of the nation’s water infrastructure, but the current ban on earmarks has effectively stopped the process for developing flood control, water supply, and other high-priority projects.

Kris Polly: For some time now, there’s been discussion that existing federal reservoirs could be put to better use in helping meet water supply needs. What is your thinking on this issue? What do we need to do at the policy level to allow federal reservoirs to better contribute to meeting water supply needs?

Jim Oliver: I become concerned whenever the federal government makes decisions about shared water infrastructure without seeking the input of local sponsors who rely on that water to meet demands. There are concerns about the federal government not having sufficient funds to adequately maintain its projects. There have been discussions around the country about transferring the titles of federal projects to the local sponsors. I’m sure some of the local sponsors would like to participate but can’t under the current model. We would like to see a mechanism put in place to allow that.

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Jim Oliver: Our municipal customers are frequently faced with short-term budgeting constraints and significant pressure to lower their costs while improving and expanding their system. But as I mentioned earlier, our staff and board need to make business decisions based on what is best and most cost effective over a time period of several decades and not just the current budget cycle. This is why we are investing now in water supply projects that won’t be operational for decades, because we have to be acting now to meet demands 50 years down the road.

Another challenge, without a doubt, is developing future water supplies within regulatory constraints. We have several water supply permits that have taken 5 or more years to get through the permitting process. In recent history, it has taken 20 to 30 years to build a new reservoir. Because of increasing regulatory requirements, I see that time frame growing even longer.

Kris Polly: What is the most significant accomplishment during your tenure as general manager of TRWD? Jim Oliver: I am fortunate to have worked on so many successful and beneficial projects during my time at TRWD. I believe that the district’s wetlands project has been some of our best work. In addition, our efforts to build the IPL jointly with the City of Dallas is a model for the new regional approach to meeting north Texas’s rapidly growing water needs.

The Trinity River Vision project has also proved to be a major accomplishment for the district. Just north of downtown Fort Worth is an industrial area that is underprotected from major floods. Instead of raising the existing levees, we created a new and innovative way to build a flood control project that also creates a major economic engine and urban redevelopment. This project is also a partnership, this time with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When it is finished, it will have created a totally redeveloped area the size of downtown Fort Worth.

Above all, I am most proud of hiring great people to put all these projects in place and staying out of their way so they can do their jobs. At the end of the day, none of this would happen without the right people in the right positions. They have made TRWD one of the finest, most successful, and pioneering districts in the entire country. I have also been fortunate enough to work with a proactive, long-term-thinking board of directors through the years.

The board has always had a clear vision for meeting the needs of the communities we serve.

Municipal Water Leader

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Water supply Flood protection Water quality Recreation Enriching communities. Improving the quality of life. l

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800 E. Northside Drive Fort Worth, TX 76102 (817) 335-2491 www.trwd.com

LEADERSHIP PROFILE

Steve Stockton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Steven L. Stockton currently serves as the director of civil works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, DC. Under the policy guidance of the chief of engineers and the assistant secretary of the army (civil works), Mr. Stockton manages and directs the policy development, programming, planning, design, construction, emergency response, and operation and maintenance activities of the Army Civil Works Program, a $5 billion annual program of water and related land resources.

Mr. Stockton is a registered professional engineer in the state of Oregon. He is a member of the Society of American Military Engineers and a fellow in the American Society of Civil Engineering. His honors include the following: the Association of State Floodplain Managers Goddard-White Award, Championing Sustainable and Comprehensive National Policy in Flood Risk Management, 2015; Honorary Diplomate, Water Resources Engineer, American Academy of Water Resources Engineers, 2014; American Water Resources Association Henry P. Caulfield, Jr. Medal for Exemplary Contribution to National Water Policy, 2011; Silver de Fleury medal for Outstanding Leadership, Performance and Management of the Civil Works Program, 2010; the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award; and the Secretary of the Army’s Exceptional Civilian Service Award.

Municipal Water Leader’s writer, Valentina Valenta, spoke with Mr. Stockton about his long and distinguished career at the Corps, the Corps’ involvement in policy reform under the 2014 Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA), lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, drought and water supply, and his vision for building and maintaining a strong and sustainable infrastructure in America.

Valentina Valenta: Please tell our readers how you got your start in the Corps and how your career evolved to position you at the helm of the Corps’ civil works program.

Steve Stockton: I have worked for the Corps for just over 40 years. I went to Oregon State University and graduated as a civil engineer in the early 1970s.

We had the draft back then. I had a very low draft number and, with a degree in civil engineering, I decided to attend the Naval Officer Candidate School. Since the Navy had filled its quota of civil engineers at that point in time, I was assigned to 8

the engineering department of an amphibious ship. I served as an officer of the deck, an assistant operations officer, and a navigator. For the four years I was on active duty, I was deployed multiple times to the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas.

After my 4 years on active duty, I spent another 18 years in the reserves in a naval control of shipping unit. When I transferred from active duty to the reserves, I looked around at what opportunities were available for civil engineers and was lucky to get a job with the Corps’ Portland District in 1975. I was a geotechnical engineer and worked on the construction of dams, levees, powerhouses, and navigation locks.

My career progressed fairly well at the Portland District. I spent 20 years in the district, starting as a GS-7 temporary and advancing to a GS-15 in the Chief of Planning and Engineering Division. I was involved with some key projects during my tenure there, such as the construction of the new navigation lock and second powerhouse at Bonneville Dam and the Mount Saint Helens recovery project. I also performed a lot of the design for the dams and reservoirs in southern Oregon and worked on the Municipal Water Leader

Columbia River channel deepening.

Then, in 1996, I came to headquarters as chief of civil works engineering for the entire Army Corps of Engineers. I spent three years in Washington, DC, and then transferred to the South Pacific Division in San Francisco as the programs director for the next seven years (including a seven-month stint in Iraq in 2004). While in San Francisco, I worked on a number of projects in California and in the other nine states in the Southwest.

In 2005, I came back to Corps headquarters as director of civil works. Several months into my leadership role for the civil works program, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. That event has had a big effect on my career over the last decade.

I am not sure anyone consciously chooses a pathway into the water resources business. I like to solve problems and build things and that is what engineers do: They apply science to solving problems, which often involves buildings things. I am so fortunate to have been involved in building so many of our nation’s critical infrastructure projects.

Valentina Valenta: The week of August 24 marked the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. How has Hurricane Katrina influenced what you have done over the last decade? What did you learn from it, and what are the lessons we ought to take away from that catastrophic event?

Steve Stockton: Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call for a lot of different reasons. We really wanted to know what went wrong, why, and what we could do to keep it from happening again. The Corps convened a team of several hundred engineers; scientists from the private sector; forensics investigators; and federal, state, and local agencies to examine how Corps policies, organization, legislation, financing, and other factors influenced the decisions that led to the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project protective structures that were in place when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

The Hurricane Protection Decision Chronology Study provided some key lessons. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the hurricane protection system was a system in name only.

The Corps had been working on it for almost 40 years, and it was only 50 to 60 percent complete due primarily to less-than-optimal funding.

Another lesson learned is that most people didn’t fully comprehend their level of risk exposure. Municipal leaders relied too much on the structural measures and didn’t think about all the different ways the risk could be reduced, such as implementing strong local zoning measures and good building codes, elevating structures Municipal Water Leader

above the base floor elevation, creating a good evacuation plan, and providing risk communication.

The Corps has spent a lot of time over the last several years trying to communicate risk and explain how risk reduction is a shared responsibility. Risk reduction is not solely the role of the federal government or the local government. Communities have a role, too. They need to look at all the risks they are exposed to and figure out how to reduce that risk to tolerable levels.

The other key lesson is that infrastructure investments pay off. The federal government spent about $130 billion to pay for the damage done by Hurricane Katrina.

Congress provided $14.6 billion in supplemental funding to rebuild the system; we used that funding to build a world-class hurricane storm damage risk reduction system and the world’s largest surge barrier and pump station.

What this tells me is that the nation does not want to acknowledge risks and does not want to make investments in reducing those risks ahead of time. Once there is a crisis, everyone throws a lot of money at it, and once it’s over, then everyone stops. The North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study, undertaken after Hurricane Sandy, incorporates a lot of the lessons learned from Katrina: approaching problems systematically, communicating risk, decisionmaking informed by science and engineering, and engaging with other federal agencies. Risk reduction and planning is a shared responsibility, not just one agency’s responsibility.

Poor decisions made over time, often referred to as the tyranny of incremental decisions, caused system failures during Hurricane Katrina. All the decisions stacked up, one after the other after the other, created unacceptable risk. For example, the Corps faced a lot of resistance from 9

the environmental community when we initially proposed the first storm surge barrier, so we selected an alternative that increased risk exposure. Similarly, the Orleans Levee Board expressed a lot of concern about the cost of the storm surge project, so we responded by selecting a less expensive, less resilient plan. Had we stuck to our guns and chose a more robust and resilient plan, I believe that a lot of the damages could have been prevented.

Valentina Valenta: What are the Corps’ top priorities in the civil works program?

Steve Stockton: The civil works program receives roughly $5 billion a year from Congress. Our priorities are expressed in the programs for which we budget.

We operate and maintain about $250 billion worth of infrastructure around the country. Roughly $3 billion is spent on the operation and maintenance of that infrastructure annually. About a third of that $3 billion is used for the dredging of inland and deep draft waterways.

While the overall budget isn’t getting bigger, we are getting more out of what we put in. We spend more on dredging and use the remaining funding for the maintenance of our locks, dams, powerhouses, and water resources infrastructure. We are spending about $1 billion a year on new projects.

That infrastructure is now aging, and we are spending much more operation and maintenance money to sustain the aging infrastructure than we can spend to develop new infrastructure. We are working on a capital investment strategy report for Congress that sets forth our needs on the inland navigation system for the next 20 years.

Valentina Valenta: How does the Corps communicate the value of those projects?

Steve Stockton: We are trying to do a better job of articulating the value of that investment to the nation. I asked our Institute for Water Resources to produce a report, Value to the Nation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works Programs: Estimates of National Economic Development Benefits and Revenues to the U.S. Treasury, to show the value of spending federal dollars on Corps programs, such as aquatic ecosystem restoration, navigation, deep draft and inland waterways, flood risk reduction, hydropower, and water supply. The study found that for a $5 billion annual investment for the years 2010–2012, roughly $87 billion in net economic development benefits are returned to the nation annually, and about $27 billion goes directly back into the treasury annually. All our civil works programs are good for the country and our future.

Valentina Valenta: Please tell us about the implementation of WRRDA 2014 and how it is different 10

from prior Corps authorization bills.

Steve Stockton: WRDA 2007 was primarily an authorization bill for projects, whereas WRRDA 2014 is a policy reform measure.

There are 202 provisions in the WRRDA 2014 bill that require implementation guidance. To date, the Corps has completed 50 percent of the implementation guidance for those provisions. Some of the reports require funding and will not be completed until appropriations are provided.

WRRDA 2014 can best be described as a policy document that is changing the way we plan projects. For example, WRRDA 2014 eliminated our traditional two-step study process by eliminating the reconnaissance phase.

Additionally, WRRDA 2014 authorized a new process to provide Congress each year with a list of recommended projects from which to authorize and fund. Under this provision, the Corps submits its own, as well as state and local, recommendations to Congress to be approved or rejected. The Corps also developed the 3x3x3 rule that was enacted in WRRDA 2014, which requires that most feasibility studies be completed within three years; cost no more than $3 million; and get concurrent review by the district, division, and headquarters. The goal is to make solid investment recommendations to the administration and Congress, but at a much faster rate. There are some real horror stories out there about Corps studies that took over 20 years and cost over $40 million to complete. The 3x3x3 rule fixes that problem.

The ban on earmarks drove much of the reform in WRRDA 2014. One of the bad things about earmarks is that they funded a lot of studies at less than capability that were stretched out beyond the initial schedule.

Anytime the schedule is stretched out, costs increase. By implementing the 3x3x3 rule, we can produce a lot of feasibility studies that receive chief ’s reports. This year alone, since implementing the civil works transformation and planning modernization, we produced 20 chief ’s reports. That is an incredible number compared to the few reports we used to produce annually.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster did a brilliant job engaging Congress about WRRDA 2014. At that time, half the members of Congress were new, and the others had not seen a Corps authorization bill since 2007. Chairman Shuster worked hard to educate and inform the members about the value of this bill to their districts and the nation. His goal was to authorize $12 billion in new Municipal Water Leader

projects, but to get the support of the fiscal conservatives, he had to show that the projects wouldn’t add to the backlog. The committee instructed the Corps to produce a deauthorization list of $18 billion in older projects.

The Corps is currently in the process of finishing that report, and it should be released at some point in September. The ultimate goal of the list is to keep us focused on a portfolio of viable, authorized projects that address the contemporary water resource needs of the nation.

Valentina Valenta: California is facing a record drought. Other states have experienced similar challenges.

What should the federal government be doing to alleviate the drought?

Steve Stockton: The federal government has a relatively limited role in water resources management. We don’t own the water rights, and we don’t allocate the water; it’s primarily a state’s responsibility to manage its water resources. That said, there is a federal role.

Water doesn’t respect any political boundaries, and the Corps tends to get in the middle of the disputes, whether it’s upstream states versus downstream states on the Missouri or the river basin systems in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. We are always trying to balance those competing demands, but in many circumstances, there is not much that the federal government can do. We can help with technical capabilities, but we don’t have the authorities or appropriations necessary to do the bulk of the work for the states.

Next month, the administration will issue an executive order about what the federal government can do to aid California and other areas where drought is the new normal. The objective of the executive order is to help create high-level policy in this area.

The administration has also put together a national security group to look at this issue in California. This group has outlined three overall goals to organize the actions for enabling greater long-term drought resilience: (1) enhancing decisionmaking processes by stakeholders with better data (2) creating incentives and removing disincentives to smart drought resilience and (3) accelerating long-term solutions. The Corps already has plans and strategies in place that fit into these actions.

For example, the Corps manages its reservoirs according to water control manuals that detail how water management operations are carried out to meet authorized Municipal Water Leader

purposes for each reservoir. Within these directives, we have also developed a deviation process that allows for the district to deviate temporarily from operations that are in the project’s approved water control plan. These deviations are governed by basic principles and are intended to address special circumstances, including dam safety issues, drought, and flood.

Within some limits, we can make our project operations better support regional and national drought resiliency. We work very closely with state and local officials to do this. Corps drought contingency plans compliment project deviation processes. We are currently working to update and strengthen these plans at our projects. The Corps also has authority to make surplus water available under the Flood Control Act of 1944; we are always ready to make accelerated deliveries under this authority when necessary. Surplus water is water that is not required for the original purpose because the need never developed or the need was reduced by changes in demand.

While we can do some things as contingencies to alleviate drought, I believe we need to consider longterm investments. Investments in water resources require looking at water scarcity, the peaks and valleys of supply, and flow rates. Investments require a 30-year plan of development. I often show people a video clip of President John F. Kennedy in Heber Springs, Arkansas, at the dedication of a dam in 1963. He remarked that the development of the dam is “a long view; it is a man’s lifetime.” He understood this issue so well.

Although it takes roughly 30 years to put together a lot of large projects, we need to build the infrastructure to create a foundation for the nation’s economy and for its future. That requires a vision and drive. Currently, everything we do is driven by either a one-year budget cycle or a two-, four-, or six-year election cycle, which drives decisionmakers to seek short-term results. What we really need is a long-term, 30-year strategy.

Conservation is a good strategy but it is not a solution to the problem. The population is growing and will continue to grow. Much of the world is water stressed, and we are just starting to see isolated areas in the United States becoming perpetually water stressed. The country needs to start planning 20–30 years into the future, because these problems cannot be fixed quickly. I believe this is what this federal strategy will show us.

States need to develop long-term strategies to manage water resources needs. The feds can provide technical assistance to complete the planning. California and Texas have done a lot of good planning work to provide reliable sources of water applied to a variety of purposes that are vital to the people and the economies of those states.

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Texas Water Development Board Chairman

Bech Bruun

Bech Bruun’s professional experience spans positions in the executive and legislative branches of government as well as in the water industry, with one of the state’s largest wholesale water providers. Mr. Bruun has served as a board member of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) since September 1, 2013.

Governor Abbott designated him chairman in June 2015.

Mr. Bruun currently serves as the designated TWDB appointee to the Texas Environmental Flows Advisory Group.

Prior to his service on the board, Mr. Bruun held a variety of positions in Governor Rick Perry’s administration, culminating in his service as director of governmental appointments. Mr. Bruun has also served as the government and customer relations manager for the Brazos River Authority. His legislative experience includes service as chief of staff to Texas State Representative Todd Hunter during the 81st legislative session and as general counsel to the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence.

He received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin and a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas. A native of Corpus Christi, Mr. Bruun resides in Austin with his wife, Glenna, and their children, Cilla Kay and Radford.

Municipal Water Leader’s writer, Valentina Valenta, spoke with Mr. Bruun about TWDB’s State Water Plan, the first round of financing under the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT), and the importance of developing supply using a long-term planning horizon.

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groundwater availability modeling and innovative technologies such as desalination and aquifer storage and recovery. As opposed to a regulatory agency, TWDB is in a unique position to be able to offer itself up as a financial, educational, and technical resource for water providers across the state, in an effort to help them develop future water supplies.

Valentina Valenta: For those of our readers who are not familiar with TWDB's history and mission, would you please provide an overview?

Valentina Valenta: Back in 1997, Texas broke new ground with Senate Bill 1 that ushered in a new era of water planning. Close to 20 years later, the latest development is SWIFT. How much of the state’s water needs have been met since Senate Bill 1 was signed into law and how much work remains?

Bech Bruun: The Texas legislature established TWDB in 1957 in response to what we refer to in Texas as the drought of record, an extended period of drought that lasted from 1950 to 1957. TWDB planning is based on water availability projections from that period of drought.

Since TWDB’s founding, it has served as a water infrastructure bank. The board finances water and wastewater projects and develops the State Water Plan every five years. TWDB’s staff is actively involved in science and research projects related to

Bech Bruun: The State Water Plan provides a roadmap to address our state’s water needs over a 50-year planning horizon. With the passage of House Bill 4 during the 83rd legislative session, TWDB now has SWIFT, a dedicated funding source for projects identified in the State Water Plan. SWIFT was constitutionally authorized and voter approved.

TWDB revises and develops a new State Water Plan every 5 years, each cycle assuming a 50-year planning horizon. The current plan shows us that if we develop no additional supplies, Texas would be short roughly Municipal Water Leader

8 million acre-feet of water by 2060.

This fall, TWDB anticipates funding the first round of State Water Plan projects through SWIFT. We anticipate offering financial assistance through this program on an annual basis. This year, we received 48 abridged applications seeking SWIFT funding. It is encouraging to see so many water providers across the state interested in this funding mechanism.

Valentina Valenta: How do reservoirs fit in the Texas Water Plan or the board’s vision?

Bech Bruun: The State Water Plan currently shows that roughly 17 percent of our future water supply will come from new reservoirs. During the first round of SWIFT, we received applications from multiple project sponsors seeking to finance the development of reservoir projects, including projects in north Texas such as Lake Ralph Hall, which is sponsored by the Upper Trinity Regional Water District, and the Lower Bois d’Arc Creek Reservoir, which is sponsored by the North Texas Municipal Water District.

The construction of new reservoirs will continue to be an important strategy to develop new water supply; however, I also believe we will see increasing interest and emphasis on the use of innovative technologies as they improve and become more cost effective. Desalination of brackish groundwater and seawater and aquifer storage and recovery will become more prevalent as water management strategies in the State Water Plan.

An increasing number of project sponsors are also examining potential reuse projects. In 2014, Wichita Falls started a direct potable reuse project in response to the drought. It has since rained, filling the area’s reservoirs, and the project was taken offline, but the City still plans to continue to develop an indirect potable reuse project that is being financed by TWDB. The legislation creating SWIFT directed TWDB to seek to achieve no less than 20 percent of program funding for projects that are defined as either conservation or reuse. There are many benefits of recycling water.

During both the dry years and the wet years, we should be recycling existing water resources as we continue to develop new supplies. The State Water Plan identifies and recommends many of these strategies.

Valentina Valenta: Please tell us about TWDB’s conservation mission and programs.

Bech Bruun: When folks see the name of our agency, they don’t think that a development board, which is often associated with the creation of new reservoirs and water plants, would be involved in conservation measures.

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TWDB has a division dedicated solely to working on conservation strategies. Conservation is a vital part of our mission and portfolio. About one-third of the strategies identified in the State Water Plan are attributed to conservation and reuse. Our conservation staff helps water suppliers develop conservation and drought contingency plans. TWDB is also the custodian of annual water loss audits that are required for utilities to access financing under SWIFT. TWDB stresses and promotes the adoption of conservation measures to preserve existing supplies before recommending the construction of new infrastructure.

Valentina Valenta: What is the role of TWDB in undertaking regional water supply projects?

Bech Bruun: Regional-scale projects are being considered and developed throughout the state. When the legislature passed SWIFT, it contained very specific prioritization criteria for the types of projects that should ideally be funded or should receive the highest consideration. Regionalization is one of the criteria that we were directed to give the highest consideration in our financing decisions. In the first round of SWIFT, the board made a $2.9 billion, multiyear commitment to the Luce Bayou project in Houston. Six water suppliers are working together on this regional project, which will move water out of the Trinity River basin into the greater Houston area to provide for its growing population.

In west Texas, the cities of Midland, Abilene, and San Angelo formed the West Texas Water Partnership.

The cities’ mayors, managers, and consultants meet on a quarterly basis to work on identifying large-scale regional projects that could provide future long-term water supply.

I believe that increasing numbers of water suppliers in Texas are going to work together to develop regional solutions.

Valentina Valenta: The Texas economy has been one of the bright spots over the last decade. Water is a critical ingredient in sustaining economic growth in Texas.

How does TWDB integrate that reality into the board’s business, and what is the biggest challenge to sustaining water resources support to the growth of the Texas economy?

Bech Bruun: One of the true benefits of the State Water Plan is not only that it tells us how we are going to ensure that we have the water we need during a record drought, but it does so while considering future population and water demand projections among municipal, industrial, and agricultural water users. The planning process itself is a tremendous economic development tool.

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Texas’s population continues to grow at a startling rate; it is estimated that roughly 1,200 new people a day are moving to Texas. Many businesses around the country continue to relocate to Texas because the state has a great business climate, but the first question they ask is, “Are you going to have a future water supply, and where is the new water going to come from?” The answer to that question is that our State Water Plan tells us where we can develop new supply, how much we are going to need, and when we are going to need it. I strongly believe the plan is just as important in the way of economic development as it is in drought preparedness.

Valentina Valenta: What are some of the greatest lessons you have learned as chairman of TWDB? Bech Bruun: I would say there is a great lesson we can all learn about managing our water resources: Memories are short. This notion has been reinforced during my time as a board member.

TWDB Chairman Bech Bruun signing a copy of the 2012 State Water Plan: Water for Governor Rick Perry appointed me Texas. and two other members to the board on September 1, 2013. During my tenure on the board, the state has experienced a variety of extreme greatly from developing a similar plan to face extreme weather patterns spanning both sides of the spectrum. weather variations and the demands brought on by When I began serving on the board in 2013, the state’s population growth. reservoir levels as a whole hovered around the lowest they had ever been. And although there have been many Valentina Valenta: What is TWDB’s most significant dry months, this May we experienced one of the wettest achievement over the last several years? periods on record, followed by a marked absence of rain.

Throughout our history, we have continued to Bech Bruun: I believe that TWDB’s greatest experience periods of exceptional drought followed by achievement in the last several years is the implementation some major flooding events. Without fail, once it begins of SWIFT. Since TWDB’s inception 58 years ago, the raining people think we are out of the woods and can board has committed roughly $15 billion in financial discontinue our efforts to develop new supply, but the assistance to Texas water projects. That is not an only reason water continues to flow from the tap during insignificant amount of money, but it pales in comparison the dry times is because we never stop planning and to SWIFT’s funding capabilities. developing new supply. This underscores the importance In July, during a two-hour board meeting, the members of our agency and our continued efforts in water planning approved $4 billion in multiyear commitments for the and development. first round of new water supply projects seeking financial It is important to look at the big picture and not only assistance from SWIFT. That was big day for our agency focus on drought as we develop our State Water Plan. and staff. SWIFT is the key that will finally allow our We must consider a variety of factors, such as population local sponsors, planners, stakeholders, and communities growth and water demand projections, if our state is going to realize the full potential and economic benefits to be able to sustain its water resources and economic of developing the new water management strategies success. Other states with similar issues may benefit identified in the State Water Plan.

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Trinity River Authority General Manager

MANAGER PROFILE

J. Kevin Ward

J. Kevin Ward is the general manager of the Trinity River Authority of Texas (TRA). As chief executive officer of TRA, he performs oversight of Texas’s largest wholesale provider of wastewater treatment services. With the support of seven executive managers, Mr. Ward manages 450 employees. He drives the implementation of board policy for the operation and development of four water treatment facilities, five wastewater treatment facilities, and one recreation project, and for water sales from four reservoirs. TRA provides service to 69 wholesale customers, including cities or municipal organizations throughout the Trinity River basin. Mr. Ward manages more than $2.3 billion of TRA’s assets and a current operating budget of $267 million.

Mr. Ward previously served as executive administrator of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) from May 2002 to February 2011 and served in various other capacities at that state agency from 1987 to 2002. He was honored in 2011 with the Water Environment Association of Texas Outstanding Public Official Award for actively promoting sound science in policy and regulations affecting water environment issues within Texas through significant contributions to legislation and government service.

Municipal Water Leader’s writer, Valentina Valenta, spoke with Mr. Ward about the benefits of regional water planning, bringing the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT) to fruition, and how other states facing drought might create sustainable water plans for the future.

Valentina Valenta: For those of our readers who are not familiar with TRA’s service coverage, please provide a brief summary.

Kevin Ward: TRA is a conservation and reclamation district that provides water and wastewater treatment, and recreation and reservoir facilities, for municipalities within the 18,000-square-mile Trinity River basin. More than half the population of Texas relies on the Trinity River for its primary water supply. TRA also maintains a master plan for basin-wide development and serves as a conduit for tax-exempt financing for municipal projects and as a local sponsor for federal water projects.

Valentina Valenta: When did you begin your tenure as general manager of TRA? Kevin Ward: TRA recruited me nearly 5 years ago while I was serving as the executive administrator for TWDB. TRA brought me onboard because I had more

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than 20 years of experience working on federal and state policy, engineering issues, and financial structures, as well as an extensive background managing organizations, various utility programs, and staff.

Valentina Valenta: Large-scale regional planning is a concept that is being discussed throughout the country.

Various cities and water entities in Texas have partnered to develop regional projects. What is TRA’s role in developing regional and basin-wide planning?

Kevin Ward: The Texas legislature chartered TRA in 1955 as a regional authority within the river basin, mandating that TRA develop a basin master plan. The authority developed the first basin master plan in 1958. Of course, the authority is a major element of the TWDB’s Region C and was active in helping to prepare that plan.

I want to emphasize that the legislature originally created TRA to be a regional provider of services, and the focus has been at the regional level from the very start. At its founding, the authority was mandated to be the nonfederal sponsor for a proposed federal navigation project that was never completed. When the organization was created in 1955, the real focus was its regional nature.

Within just a few years of its formation, in December 1959, the authority began operating its Central Regional Wastewater System (CRWS) as the first regional facility of its kind, serving Irving, Grand Prairie, and Farmers Branch, plus a portion of western Dallas. The system has since expanded to serve all or part of 21 contracting parties and approximately 1.2 million people in the Dallas-Fort Municipal Water Leader

Worth area. CRWS is capable of providing complete treatment for monthly average flows of 162 million gallons per day and removes 99 percent of conventional pollutants from raw wastewater.

In 2013, CRWS celebrated the treatment and discharge of 1 trillion gallons of wastewater during a 21-year period without any permit violations. We believe that CRWS is the first sanitary sewer system to have achieved this major milestone, which is a tremendous accomplishment in our industry.

The treatment system can handle daily maximum flows of 335 million gallons per day and a two-hour peak flow maximum of 405 million gallons per day. CRWS also has the mechanical dewatering capability of processing 232 dry tons of sludge daily.

CRWS is a huge accomplishment and a major element of our regional planning focus.

We are currently facing the same kinds of problems other wastewater agencies face with the disposal of wastewater treatment byproducts: organics and solids. We had been achieving beneficial use of the materials by land application.

TRA was one of the largest land applicators of such byproducts on farm crops for nonhuman consumption. Unfortunately, we ran into some issues related to the urbanization of those same areas where the beneficial use was taking place. Land application byproducts became less compatible as the land use shifted increasingly to residential use.

We are currently landfilling the product. We believed that the potential for large rainfall events from El Niño or other storm events, as well as the residential growth, meant that land application costs would increase significantly, even though we believed such beneficial use to be less harmful to the environment. We took the opportunity to rebid the disposal contract and now take the byproducts to landfills. This change turned out to be a really wise decision. During the 30 or 40 days of rain this past May, no one could put anything on the fields.

Another entity in the area had been doing land application, and the rains forced them to take all their biosolids to the landfill at additional cost. So we looked fairly smart for making that decision.

Our investment in new technologies also helped drive our decision to take biosolids to the landfill. We are currently engaged in building and installing the second phase of one of only two large-scale thermal hydrolysis projects in the country.

We are making this investment using an at-risk construction contract—the first we have done here at TRA. It is the largest such contract that has been done in Texas. We are scheduled to have the project completely implemented by 2017 or 2018. The technology should cut our solids production in half. We believe we should have a product that will be marketable, and that we may be able to work with the fertilizer or agriculture industry.

We are striving to put the biosolids back to beneficial use, but the prospects are yet to be determined. We started talking about regional planning, and I believe this example shows how TRA works far afield to protect the environment and the well being of people in our service region.

We’re also working to determine whether we can find a way Municipal Water Leader

TRA placed a commemorative flag at its locations to celebrate 60 years of service to communities throughout the Trinity River basin.

to use the methane gas byproducts from the new thermal hydrolysis process. Finding economical uses is challenging. I want people to understand that in just the last several years, we accomplished so much to serve the region in a sustainable way. We have invested $500 million in improvements, including huge stormwater detention basins, which did their jobs during the rains this past May. Yes, regional planning is integrated into everything we do for our service area.

We’re proud of our accomplishments, and we have received 17 consecutive platinum awards.

Valentina Valenta: What are the biggest challenges facing your service area and industry?

Kevin Ward: TRA works continuously to adapt to new federal and state regulations. Every two years, TRA conducts a survey of risks for the organization to identify future challenges; management’s number 1 concern is that regulatory agencies will continue to expand the rules that govern water and wastewater treatment, and TRA will be forced to pass the additional capital costs on through rate increases.

Most of TRA’s rate increases have occurred due to additional regulatory requirements that forced us to build additional storm storage to address the infiltration and inflow of effluent. Previous construction standards permitting the use of steel-reinforced concrete have resulted in pipes that failed in a 15- to 20-year range. Those issues have driven a lot of the authority’s capital increases and, subsequently, have been a big driver behind our rate increases.

Additionally, the movement to implement old ideas and initiatives, such as the waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ planning guidelines, must end. Those are old fights, and we have all 17

come a long way since then. We don’t need to right an old wrong that is no longer relevant. Prior to the implementation of WOTUS, Texas was already adhering to some of the highest water and wastewater treatment standards in the country. We worked hard to solve our water quality challenges and succeeded, but WOTUS doesn’t recognize those efforts.

Although we are faced with a growing regulatory structure, it does not diminish our goal to produce a high-quality, awardwinning water product at the best rates possible. That is why we are now engaged in a pilot project that uses engineered biofiltration to treat water for several cities in the metroplex.

TRA complies with every regulation on the books, and we will continue to provide a high-quality product by using innovation in the field to meet new regulatory requirements.

Valentina Valenta: During your tenure at TWDB, you were involved in the State Water Plan. Prior to your transition, the Texas legislature passed the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas, or SWIFT, to provide a funding mechanism to carry out the state water plan. What was your role in the development and implementation of SWIFT? Kevin Ward: Many people in Texas believed we had a great State Water Plan, but that it would not achieve its goals unless it had a dedicated funding source. SWIFT was born to take the State Water Plan from a good concept to reality. When I transitioned from TWDB to TRA, I was still in the process of reviewing the finance structure of legislation authorizing a $6 billion general obligation evergreen bond to support several TWDB programs. Two years later, at the request of members of the state legislature, I helped confirm the validity of empirical analyses underlying SWIFT and verify that the final language creating SWIFT would work to provide a sound program.

Valentina Valenta: What do you think our political and legislative decisionmakers ought to be doing to help states address drought and limited supply?

Kevin Ward: I have always been interested in history.

When I first began working in the water industry in Texas, I studied the state’s water planning history. (It is important to note that Texas’s water challenges are not unique to the state.

Many western states share the same issues.) In the late 1940s, then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson asked the Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman to perform an assessment of Texas’s petrochemical and agricultural industries to determine how to develop the state’s natural resources—including water supply— not only for the benefit of Texas but the entire nation.

At that time, the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s was still fresh in people’s minds, and Texas and its neighboring states had experienced perpetual drought for years. It was not immediately clear to many state leaders that water resources would be readily available to help usher in economic growth.

When [the U.S. Department of the] Interior released its report indicating that Texas had a significant amount of surface water 18

and groundwater, many policymakers were surprised. The report also indicated that supply would need to be developed and managed in stages into the future, to provide measurable benefit to industries that rely on this resource.

Although there are other options available to develop water supply today that did not exist in the 1950s, such as desalination of brackish water and saltwater, we can readily apply the lessons learned from the Interior study to any part of the country experiencing drought. First, surface water should always be developed to its maximum capacity, because capturing and storing water is cost effective and provides benefits to the environment by blocking runoff. Groundwater basins should be developed when it is economically infeasible to develop surface water and should remain unused until surface supply is depleted.

If Texas were to experience a 20- to 30-year drought, for example, and surface supply was depleted during that time, fully charged groundwater basins would be able to provide enough supply until it rained and the reservoirs were filled again.

If we want to successfully navigate droughts in the future, we need to overcome the current widespread mindset that water infrastructure development is harmful to the Earth.

Environmental groups are opposed to the development of any new surface water impoundments, but they do not seem to understand that their position ultimately harms the future of our environment. States need more storage, whether it’s aquifer storage or surface water storage, to preserve our environment and sustain our quality of life regardless of a long-term drought. Each interest group must learn to compromise. We must all learn that we do not need to sacrifice water resources development to protect the environment.

Valentina Valenta: What do you believe are your greatest accomplishments at TRA over the past five years?

Kevin Ward: When I transitioned from TWDB to TRA, I applied my strategic planning skills toward revisiting and renewing every policy at TRA. We upgraded all of our measures to the highest standards or reached a position that would allow us to achieve those standards in the near future. We put in place a strategic plan that would allow staff development to adapt to TRA’s changing needs. We reformed our approach to financing engineering services. We are managing our capital requirements, including conducting annual meetings with customers to ensure their support.

I also applied a strategic framework during my transition.

That part of the transition was made easy because the staff is so enthusiastic about TRA’s mission. I also worked with the senior and retiring workforce to help develop strategies to build and recruit the next generation of TRA employees. TRA staff members work quickly and efficiently. Together, with the guidance of our 25-member board of directors, we can develop new projects and improve coverage to the service area. TRA has one of the highest performing water resources development teams in the country today, and I am proud to lead them into the future.

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Farewell to a Great Texas Water Leader:

WATER ASSOCIATIONS

An Interview With Leroy Goodson

For the last 34 years, Leroy Goodson, general manager of the Texas Water Conservation Association (TWCA), has served the organization in various capacities and helped make it one of the finest water resources associations in the country. Mr. Goodson is scheduled to retire from TWCA at the end of 2015. He also will retire from his position as executive secretary of the Texas Ground Water Association (TGWA), a role he has held since January 1, 1982.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Goodson has worked under 35 different presidents in each association and helped TGWA grow from nearly 300 to more than 1,500 members. He also was closely involved with the National Water Resources Association (NWRA) and chaired its State Executive Council for almost 20 years.

Mr. Goodson has received a number of lifetime achievement awards for his numerous contributions to the water resources industry in Texas and his commitment to water resources development throughout the western states.

Municipal Water Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke with Mr. Goodson about state water planning, the role of the federal government in water resources development, and some of the highlights of his decades-long service to the municipal water sector.

Kris Polly: How did you begin your career in the water resources business?

Leroy Goodson: I first got into the water resources business in 1971. I was a vocational agriculture teacher in New Braunfels, Texas. I was involved in the Lions International and had the opportunity to give a talk at a neighboring community. Following the presentation, a water agency official contacted me to see if I might be interested in considering a position with his agency.

I was employed with that agency for 10 years before joining TWCA. Kris Polly: You have 34 years of successful service to TWCA and TGWA, as well as your years of service to NWRA. Your efforts have certainly cast a big shadow.

How you want to be remembered? What do you think is your greatest achievement?

Leroy Goodson: I would like those who follow in my footsteps to remember how important it is for us to have passion for protecting water quality and availability, to provide resources and opportunities for others to do the same, to continue working together to solve our water resources challenges, and to protect this

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invaluable resource for the ever-growing population in Texas. Each of us has a set of skills and stories to share with one another. For many years, I have helped groundwater professionals (those who drill and maintain our water well supplies) by developing and leading continuing education classes—through an agreement between TWCA and TGWA—so that drillers and pump installers could renew their licenses for the water well industry. Every year, I travel throughout the state of Texas to lead these courses. Following my retirement, I may continue to be involved in the continuing education program.

Investing in the continuing education of our water resources experts is an important component of our ongoing water resources development strategy.

TWCA has engaged in many successful advocacy efforts over the years due to the quality and knowledge of the membership, but I believe that its greatest achievement has been the growth of a highly diverse staff and membership. I worked hard with my colleagues to encourage and foster diversity at every level of TWCA and TGWA over the past 34 years.

We have more females, young people, and minorities involved in leadership roles in our water associations today than at any other time during my tenure. We Municipal Water Leader

have a new generation looking at all our complex water resources challenges and approaching the problems with a new and diverse set of ideas. This pleases me to no end.

Members of the association are outstanding, dedicated individuals.

Kris Polly: You’ve lived a lot of water history in Texas.

You were on the scene when the Texas legislature passed, and Governor George W. Bush signed, Senate Bill 1, which created the current generation of Texas water plans. How have the plans worked, and what do you think should be done to improve water planning in Texas?

Leroy Goodson: Senate Bill 1, the Brown-Lewis Water Management Plan, received strong support from Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock and is a great piece of legislation. It is a comprehensive water resources management bill that redefined the process of state water planning in Texas. Signed into law in 1997, this legislation created the state’s 16 regional water planning groups to examine the water needs of each region and to develop regional plans to meet those needs. Senate Bill 1 essentially changed Texas water policy by creating a mechanism that brought together local citizens, regional authorities, cities, diverse groups of water users, and environmental interests to work on developing regional water plans. Today, Texas is the leader of this bottom-up planning approach to water resources development. Decisionmaking for myriad water resources management issues in Texas, including surface water, groundwater, water supply, drought preparation and response, and data collection and dissemination, all takes place at the local level.

Kris Polly: Texas has often been viewed as a model for state water planning. How can other states learn from Texas’s water planning?

Leroy Goodson: Texas has a lot of unique issues, but other states certainly ought to take a look at our regional water-planning model. Further, other states must have a reliable financing system in place, or a plan to start or improve financing mechanisms, if they want to build or modify a water project. Infrastructure financing is a big issue today. We all need to be thinking about the financing system just as seriously as we do the technical development of our supplies.

Kris Polly: Lots of studies have been conducted on how states view the role of the federal government in supporting their water development needs. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has completed two such reports in the last 15 years. What should the federal government be doing to support water supply development?

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Leroy Goodson: Senate Bill 1 helped us determine the proper role of federal government in water resources management, how federal agencies fit into that role, and appropriate levels of federal investment by creating a roadmap that ensures we can maintain local management of our water resources. We have primarily used the federal government for financing water resources projects. Texas is a little different from some of the other western states; federal water projects are primarily sponsored at the local level and have been funded by the local governments, with assistance from the federal government in some cases. Our municipalities and water districts have been innovative in financing these projects.

Now, our state is heavily involved in assisting with the financing of these projects through House Bill 4, passed in 2013.

Kris Polly: Water development is important, but today it seems that we are compelled to spend a lot of time on regulatory issues. What needs to be done to improve the current regulatory regime?

Leroy Goodson: That’s a very difficult question, but there is an answer. Following the seven-year drought in the 1950s, there was a lot of surface water development in the state of Texas to prevent the consequences of diminished supply. A number of reservoirs were built in the 1960s to increase storage. Over the last 25 years, new regulations and environmental rules have made it difficult to develop new storage capacity.

Today, if water managers want to build a new project or make alterations to existing facilities, they must follow a number of regulations pertaining to, for example, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act section 404 permitting process, and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit program. Today, there are so many regulations to consider, it is almost impossible for a municipality or water authority to build a new water supply project.

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers adopted a new rule under the Clean Water Act that applies federal water regulation to a wide variety of water bodies across the country. The rule was adopted despite our concerns and objections. It was developed at the top, and we were not invited to sit at the table until it was too late. It was thrust upon us. At the end of the rulemaking process, 23

stakeholders all over the country were finally allowed to provide comments about the proposed rule. Although most of the stakeholders expressed opposition, the rule still moved forward.

Our state water planning process uses a bottom-up approach that allows stakeholders to develop and manage their water resources, whereas the federal regulatory regime uses a top-down system of centralized decisionmaking. It is clear to me that if we want to achieve the right balance between water resources development and the protection of our environment, the federal government must utilize a bottom-up approach.

Kris Polly: Under your leadership, TWCA undertook a bold federal outreach program. You must have at least 10 years of experience with Texas Water Day in our nation’s capital. How has that worked out for Texas? How would you improve the program?

Leroy Goodson: The Texas Water Day program has worked very well for all those involved in our state’s water resources planning. Every year, we organize visits for our members with the congressional delegation in Washington, DC, as well as with the top leaders at the Bureau of Reclamation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other agencies involved in water resources development in Texas.

When we first started Texas Water Day in Washington, DC, the goal was to ensure that our members developed relationships with the delegation. Today, our members have a wonderful relationship with the congressional delegation.

Congress has become increasingly involved in the Texas Water Day program over the last decade, and we expect that to continue.

In the future, I think it will be important for those involved in the Texas Water Day program to share their relationship-building model with other congressional delegations facing similar water resources issues. There is a lot we can be learning from one another.

Kris Polly: We talked about the role of the federal government in supporting state water development. What, if anything, should the states be doing together to achieve the right federal water policy? What is the role of the NWRA in 24

those those joint and cooperative state campaigns?

Leroy Goodson: Organizations like the NWRA are successful because they bring combinations of interests together from a variety of groups, such as water authorities, irrigation districts, municipalities, and political subdivisions. The NWRA has provided an awareness of issues that benefits all its members and a voice to state water associations with their congressional delegations in Washington, DC. Today, most members who are involved with the NWRA can reach their congressional delegation a lot more easily than they could in the past. The NWRA brings all these interests and groups together and provides a really strong package for advocacy. There is strength in numbers, and all the states involved in the NWRA would tell you that. We all work together to achieve the same goals, and that’s what makes us so effective.

Kris Polly: You have had success sustaining the relevance of the organizations you have served. Now you are passing the torch to the next generation. What advice do you have for the new generation of water leaders?

Leroy Goodson: I believe that those who will follow in my footsteps at TWCA will continue to provide great leadership and will work hard to make TWCA a go-to organization throughout the 21st century. No one person can do it alone. TWCA’s membership has a very talented and educated group of people who understand water resources in the state of Texas better than anyone. They are also the most sincere group of individuals I know working to maintain a sustainable water supply and protect our environment. They are the future water leaders in the state.

I know of no other group that can fill that role.

I made so many friends in this business. I have 34 years of stories. I have 34 years of relationship-building activities at TWCA, TGWA, and the NWRA. I am still meeting new people. It’s been wonderful. I never wanted to take time to get away from this job. It’s been a great ride, and all the friends I made along the way are such an important part of my life. I do hope that those who take the helm will remember some of my stories and work to maintain an environment that fosters an even better group of water leaders in the future.

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Gene Koontz,

WATER ASSOCIATIONS

AMERICAN WATER WORKS ASSOCIATION Gene C. Koontz, PE, BCEE, took the gavel as president of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) board of directors in June 2015. He has been with Gannett Fleming Inc., in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for 40 years. Mr. Koontz currently serves as senior vice president overseeing the firm’s water market.

Mr. Koontz has been a member of AWWA since 1982 and has been an active volunteer and leader in the Pennsylvania section. He previously held several other positions, including section chair, director, water quality chair, and water utility council member. At the national level, Gene has served as vice president; on the Finance, Pension, and Governing Documents Committees; and as liaison to the Canadian Affairs and Young Professionals Committees.

Mr. Koontz received his bachelor of science degree from Lehigh University. He lives in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Barbara. They are the proud parents of Adam and Sarah.

Municipal Water Leader’s writer, Valentina Valenta, spoke with Mr. Koontz about our nation’s aging infrastructure, the funding challenges associated with the repair and replacement of our water and wastewater systems, and what AWWA is doing to prepare our water professionals to successfully meet our water resources needs in the future.

Valentina Valenta: For those readers who are not familiar with AWWA, how would you describe your association?

Gene Koontz: AWWA was founded in 1881 in St. Louis, Missouri, to address the water quality issues of the time. Since then, AWWA has developed into the largest association dedicated to managing, treating, and delivering water in North America and beyond—we have just opened our first international affiliate in India. The association currently has over 50,000 members, including water utility professionals; service providers, such as consultants and equipment suppliers; and individuals across the full water spectrum.

AWWA has a long and proud history of advancing the science of safe drinking water but has expanded its offerings to address related water resources issues.

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Although the association continues its primary focus on drinking water, its leadership found that a large percentage of the members are also involved in managing wastewater, storm water, or reuse. And as every drop of water becomes more valuable, we strive to address these concerns and provide total water solutions.

AWWA is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has a government affairs office in Washington, DC. The DC office focuses on smart water policy, providing critical information for key federal water regulators and legislative decisionmakers. Today, AWWA has 43 different sections that help manage the needs of members across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Valentina Valenta: What are some of AWWA’s long-term priorities?

Gene Koontz: Every year, we ask our members to participate in a survey that is designed to foster twoway communication and gather the primary objectives

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and concerns of the water resources profession so that we can better understand how to support them. Over the last several years, our membership has repeatedly conveyed that the number 1 issue for the industry is the replacement of aging water and wastewater infrastructure, including financing options for capital improvement programs and projects. We are also working on a number of other issues that are important to water professionals, including protecting water supplies, helping the public understand the value of our water systems, and building the future water workforce.

A 2012 study produced by AWWA, Buried No Longer: Confronting America’s Water Infrastructure Challenge, analyzed the age and condition of our drinking water delivery systems and estimated the timing and cost to repair, replace, and expand the infrastructure. The association is currently working on another study that will evaluate the state of our wastewater infrastructure.

Together, these reports will provide us with a more complete picture of the state of our buried water and wastewater infrastructure. We need to be able to readily determine and prioritize our needs and make recommendations that will support various financing options to expeditiously replace those systems that are already failing or approaching the end of service life.

Valentina Valenta: Water resources financing issues are a very important part of AWWA’s education and advocacy platform in Washington, DC. In 2014, Congress passed the Water Resources and Reform Development Act (WRRDA), which created a new water infrastructure finance program, the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Authority (WIFIA). The program seeks to encourage private-sector investment in drinking water infrastructure by providing federal low-interest loans to fund projects that exceed $20 million. What is AWWA’s position regarding WIFIA? Do you think this program will be able to meet the drinking water industry’s needs?

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Gene Koontz: AWWA was a major supporter of WIFIA from the beginning, so of course we are pleased it has become law. I would like to correct one statement in your question, however. WIFIA’s intent was not to push utilities toward private-sector investment. There is certainly that opportunity, depending on how utilities choose to finance the non-WIFIA portion of loans, but it is not a requirement or even an explicit goal of the act.

WIFIA can serve systems of various sizes: Projects for medium to large systems must cost at least $20 million, and the threshold is $5 million for small systems.

Our membership is highly diverse, and for that reason the association supports a variety of finance options, including federal loan programs, state assistance, and private investment. Some finance options, however, work better for our members than others, so we try to focus our advocacy efforts on protecting those as much as possible.

For example, AWWA has always been a strong supporter of the State Revolving Fund (SRF). Its low-interest loans have been a very important and critical tool for our membership. A large number of our utility members have used that program. One of AWWA’s goals is to maintain, if not expand, current appropriations levels for the SRF. WIFIA is a good complement to the SRF, but it needs a technical correction to make it a fully functioning loan program for a greater percentage of our municipal members. Under the current law, utilities could be provided with a low-interest loan to cover 49 percent of the cost of a project, but the language also prohibits the use of tax-free municipal bonds to fund the remaining 51 percent. There is a lot of support among drinking water utilities to get Congress to remove that severely restrictive provision. This needs to be done for WIFIA to fully realize its potential for helping address the nation’s water infrastructure challenges. AWWA is highly engaged with its membership in this effort and is also working with the congressional committees of jurisdiction to encourage a timely appropriation to fund the program. As WIFIA is advanced, we also need to ensure that the appropriations cycle for the SRF is not disrupted.

Valentina Valenta: What is your message to today’s policymakers and decisionmakers with respect to financing water and wastewater infrastructure in the coming decade?

Gene Koontz: There is an important message to share.

The water resources profession has generally done a great job financing operations and capital improvement budgets through rate structures and fees. However, the majority of utilities are now finding that capital improvement costs

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are increasing at a rate that can no longer be sustained by customer fees. In the near future, many water utility providers will need access to low-cost capital from a variety of sources. Since drinking water projects typically span up to 100-year life cycles, it makes sense to provide a finance structure that better matches the long-term service life of the assets.

There will be a lot of affordability issues, in particular for the larger cities. We must educate our decisionmakers to understand that we are at an important intersection regarding the choices and investments we make related to water infrastructure. The industry cannot do it alone.

We need finance partners to help make our infrastructure sustainable over the next century. These projects are extremely vital to the future of this country. We cannot compete or succeed globally if we fail to do the work necessary to repair and replace our aging infrastructure.

Valentina Valenta: What is the most important thing you have learned as an association leader?

Gene Koontz: Intuitively, I was already aware of the value of associations, but when I stepped into a leadership role, I was able to witness firsthand the power that an association can have. Whenever I talk to someone who may not be convinced that belonging to a dues-paying association is valuable, as long as that person truly has an interest in water, public health, and advancing the state of our infrastructure, it’s very easy to justify the fees based on the returns. AWWA has thousands of really smart, dedicated people working on all of our current water resources challenges. Collectively, the membership provides the industry with ideas and innovation that cannot be found anyplace else. The solutions are located inside the association, and that is a very powerful concept.

Valentina Valenta: In addition to the repair and replacement of aging infrastructure, where will AWWA be focusing its resources and education and advocacy efforts in the future?

be happening today. That is why AWWA partnered with the American Society of Civil Engineers and Engineers Without Borders-USA to create the Community Engineering Corps to provide volunteer technical expertise to underserved communities in the United States and to ensure that their infrastructure meets their community’s public health needs.

Another great addition to AWWA is an office we opened in India on July 1, 2015. India has a lot of very smart and dedicated drinking water professionals, but it needs a little help to bring all those people together to share best practices and lessons learned so it can better solve its water resources problems. The association will help them to do that. We are finding that as we are sharing our knowledge, we are learning a lot in return.

Finally, there is a big human infrastructure need that is not often discussed outside of the industry; by and large, we have an aging workforce. The median age of AWWA’s membership and others involved in the business is increasing, and we are going to have to renew and replace a significant portion of that workforce over the next 5 to 10 years. To ensure that we do not lose that knowledge base, we are working hard to transfer the skills and institutional knowledge from the older retiring generation to the younger generations.

AWWA has always had a good student scholarship and mentorship program for those interested in the profession, but the association has made it a top priority over the last several years to expand that program to recruit young, talented water professionals to fill the rapidly approaching vacancies. I am very proud of AWWA’s young professionals program, and I am hopeful that the next generation is going to do an excellent job developing our nation’s water resources throughout the 21st century.

AWWA President Gene Koontz can be reached at (303) 794-7711.

Gene Koontz: While AWWA tends to focus a lot on the need to fix our nation’s infrastructure and secure new and improved finance options, the association is also actively engaged in a couple other major new programs that deal with advancing public health issues in underserved communities. The poorer rural communities in North America not only face an uphill struggle to replace infrastructure, some of them are still trying to meet basic public health needs. Obviously, this shouldn’t

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Making Steel Pipe in Saginaw

INNOVATORS

By Eric Stokes We do not often think about it, but our nation’s water resources infrastructure includes a complex network of piping and conveyance systems that deliver a clean, fresh water supply to millions of homes and businesses. Our economic and social livelihoods depend on this water delivery system each and every day. Our ability to move water from multiple sources, including the surface and the ground, and from new alternatives such as desalination plants, allows us to have safe, reliable water supplies. We merely turn on the tap, and the water flows.

Chances are that water flowing from the tap spent some time in a Northwest Pipe–engineered steel pipe system. Northwest Pipe Company is a leading manufacturer of welded steel pipe and tube products. Its Water Transmission Group is the largest manufacturer of engineered steel pipe water conveyance systems in North America. With eight water transmission manufacturing facilities, the group is positioned to meet North America’s growing needs for water and wastewater infrastructure. The Water Transmission Group serves a wide range of markets, and its solution-based products are a good fit for applications such as water transmission, plant piping, low pressure and gravity flow, energy, tunnels, river, railroad and highway crossings, large-diameter pressure pipe rehabilitation, structural, and industrial.

The Saginaw, Texas, facility of Northwest Pipe has been a major supplier to the Tarrant Regional Water

District’s Integrated Pipeline Project. The facility has supplied pipe on two sections of the project and is currently in production on Segment 15-2.

Northwest Pipe acquired the Saginaw, Texas, plant from North American Pipe in June 1999 and converted it from a fabrication shop to a pipe manufacturing facility. That conversion positioned the company to pursue opportunities in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, as well as the rest of the southern United States. From the Saginaw plant, Northwest Pipe has supplied many projects, including t &BHMF .PVOUBJO $POOFDUJPO 48,000 feet of 84-inch pipe for the Tarrant Regional Water District t #SVTIZ $SFFL 5SBOTNJTTJPO .BJO 40,000 feet of 72- and 78-inch pipe for Brushy Creek Regional Utility Authority t 8BSE $PVOUZ 5SBOTNJTTJPO 1JQFMJOF 110,500 feet of 48-inch pipe for the Colorado River Municipal Water District By early 2010, we recognized that the market was shifting to larger diameter pipe, and as a result, in 2012 we completed a major upgrade to the Saginaw facility. This investment has enabled Saginaw to better serve the needs of the large water projects in the area.

Northwest Pipe not only manufactures pipe but also offers engineering expertise to water authorities and districts. We help them understand the advantages that steel pipe offers in all diameter ranges, large and small, as well as the longevity that it provides in comparison to other materials. The product offers a lot

A Northwest Pipe-certified welder completes a fabricated M-11 harness.

Cement mortar lining of 60-inch pipe.

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Congresswoman Kay Granger (right) celebrates with Northwest Pipe during the 2013 plant expansion ribbon cutting event.

of flexibility in how it is used, operated, or modified.

Throughout many parts of the country, and specifically in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, Northwest Pipe has changed the view of what welded steel pipe is and what it can do for the water transmission business. As a result, we are seeing more jobs requiring steel pipe. Steel is a time-tested material that has continued to advance in the marketplace with better coating systems and better grades of steel. Steel pipe is proven to be a product that can be designed for any type of installation, whether it is directbury, tunneling, jacking, or sliplining into an existing system.

Regrettably, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to identify a funding shortfall for water infrastructure. Fortunately, some states, like Texas and California, have stepped forward and made large commitments to improving their state’s water infrastructure. In Texas, the Water Development Board’s State Water Implementation Plan for Texas will provide $2 billion for low-interest loans in support of water projects and programs.

We are also encouraged by the development of publicprivate partnerships as a method to bring projects to market. Last year, Congress passed the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which includes a Water Infrastructure Financing Authority that will allow water and wastewater owners to identify competitive and costsaving project delivery options.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that broken sewage transmission pipes leak roughly 900 billion gallons of wastewater into our communities annually.

Many U.S. cities lose 100 million gallons per day of treated water but have difficulty identifying the source of the leaks. The federal government needs to implement and fully fund the Water Infrastructure Financing Authority Municipal Water Leader

so that water providers can access private capital to rehabilitate aging transmission systems more quickly for the sake of the public’s health and well-being. We want to work with the water community to make this initiative a reality.

Northwest Pipe is committed to the water and wastewater industry. We believe the future of the company is in these market segments, and our investments in Saginaw and the purchase of Permalok™, which manufactures interlocking pipe for trenchless installations, are prime examples of this commitment. We continue to look for more ways to grow our product offerings and to share the benefits we bring to our customers.

Economies move forward when their water resources systems thrive.

Eric Stokes is the vice president of sales for Northwest Pipe Company’s eastern region. You can reach Eric at ESTOKES@nwpipe.com.

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BUSINESS LEADERS

Mike Nichols of Freese and Nichols Mike Nichols joined Freese and Nichols, Inc. (FNI), in 1979 and has served in multiple corporate and technical capacities, including managing the Civil/ Transportation Group and Water and Wastewater Transmission Group. More recently, he has led expansion of FNI services in central Texas, opening and enlarging offices in San Antonio, Austin, and Corpus Christi, and in North Carolina. As chief marketing officer, Mr. Nichols oversees implementation of client-centered marketing, a comprehensive approach to exploring FNI clients’ needs and developing solutions over the course of long-term relationships. Mr. Nichols received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and his master’s degree from Texas A&M University.

Municipal Water Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke with Mr. Nichols about FNI’s long and proud history in the water resources business, its role in developing water projects throughout Texas, and the company’s philosophy of innovative infrastructure for the benefit of the nation.

Kris Polly: Please share FNI’s history with our readers.

Mike Nichols: In 1894, Major John B. Hawley came down to the Fort Worth area to develop its first water system. When that project was finished, he decided to stay and formed what would become Freese and Nichols. He was an interesting individual and left a long and remarkable legacy. He did a lot for Fort Worth, including engineering the first water treatment plants in the city, and he was even involved in projects in far-reaching places such as the Panama Canal.

In 1922, Simon Freese joined the firm as the original Freese, and in 1927, my grandfather, Marvin C. Nichols, the original Nichols, joined the firm. Marvin was the first chairman of the Board of Water Development (now known as the Texas Water Development Board). Both of them had unique skills and were focused on the water industry. They had a lot to do with the 34

development of water resources in Texas. Their work provided the foundation for who we are today.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, my father, Bob Nichols; my uncle, Jim Nichols; and Simon Freese’s son, Lee Freese, joined the firm and carried on their predecessors’ tradition. If you look back at Jim Nichols’s history, he was very involved in water supply. He helped develop some of the water districts in west Texas that still exist today. Bob Nichols was very focused on wastewater treatment projects. Lee Freese was very involved in water transmission projects. They all provided the foundation for the firm that has grown over the years into a corporation.

One of our great strengths is our talented and growing leadership team. All our leaders are very focused on client service. As a family-oriented business, we also focus on developing and nurturing our employees through continuing education and professional development programs, community service initiatives, and employee wellness.

Kris Polly: What is your role at FNI? Mike Nichols: I have been with FNI for 36 years. My first role with the company was as a rodman for a survey crew. After I finished college, I went to work for Lee Freese on transmission lines and pump stations. Since then, I have had the opportunity to manage various groups and offices within the company over the years.

Every firm encounters tough times, and we have to learn from those experiences. In 1995, we didn’t have a very good year. I had to make some tough business decisions. From that event, I learned that a successful business needs to have a good marketing and sales team that is always focused on bringing more work into the company. Since that time, I have transitioned to become FNI’s chief marketing officer. It has helped our company maintain and grow our client base.

Marvin Nichols (second from left) is sworn in as the first chairman of the Board of Water Development (now known as the Texas Water Development Board) in 1957.

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Kris Polly: What are some of FNI’s top projects in Texas and nationally?

Mike Nichols: We have a portfolio of great clients and projects in the water resources industry. Recently, FNI provided design and construction phase services for the $100 million Ward County Water Transmission System for the Colorado River Municipal Water District (CRMWD).

The new system supplies 30 million gallons per day with 21 groundwater wells, 65 miles of pipeline, 4 pump stations, and other related facilities. From start to finish, the entire project took 18 months to complete and was finished ahead of schedule and under budget. FNI also designed a reuse system for CRMWD that takes water from the wastewater plant, treats it to potable water quality, and pumps it into CRMWD’s raw water supply. That project proved to be a major success for reuse in Texas.

Our team is also providing engineering and construction phase services for the Mary Rhodes Phase 2 Pipeline project for the City of Corpus Christi. The project includes engineering a raw water delivery system to transfer 35,000 acre-feet per year of water from the Lower Colorado River to the existing Mary Rhodes Pipeline system, which will then transfer the water to the O.N. Stevens Water Treatment Plant.

FNI is involved in a proposed water supply reservoir on Lower Bois d’Arc Creek, a tributary of the Red River in Fannin County. Our team is providing permitting, design, and program management services. This project is a great example of our team’s work with multiple entities—state and federal agencies, the sponsoring entity (North Texas Municipal Water District), and the public—involved in the project’s development. Lower Bois d’Arc Creek Reservoir, when complete, will be the largest new lake constructed in Texas since 1991.

Our engineering and technical teams have served a number of roles in the Integrated Pipeline (IPL) Project for Tarrant Regional Water District, including performing a route study, environmental services, hydraulic analysis, design for several miles of the pipe, and design of four storage reservoirs. We designed Line J, Section 1 of the IPL, which is now the world’s first EnvisionTM-rated pipeline, addressing various aspects of sustainability, including the use of native materials as the aggregate in controlled low-strength material embedment. This, along with other sustainable practices, contributed to the project earning a Silver Award last year.

Our team has been closely involved in the state’s regional water planning. FNI has provided engineering and technical expertise to 9 of the 16 water plans that have been developed.

Outside Texas, FNI designed four earthen embankment dams for the Boy Scouts of America’s Summit Bechtel Family National Scouting Reserve that will better position it to be used as a multipurpose, year-round center for Municipal Water Leader

Freese and Nichols designed four earthen embankment dams for the Boy Scouts of America, forming four lakes for various recreation activities, including fishing, kayaking, canoeing, swimming, and scuba diving at the National Scout Reserve in West Virginia. (Photo Credit: Boy Scouts of America)

scouting activities. The dams form four lakes for various recreation activities, including fishing, kayaking, canoeing, swimming, and scuba diving.

FNI is also currently working on numerous water and wastewater projects in Oklahoma. One involves building 50 miles of approximately 42-inch diameter pipeline. This project will provide additional water supply to a major city in Oklahoma.

Those are just some of our many highly important water projects.

Kris Polly: FNI has a rich history and tradition in water. The headline on your website proclaims, “Defining sustainability in everything we do.” Can you tell us what sustainability means and how you integrate that idea in your work in water resources?

Mike Nichols: Sustainability tends to be a challenging term for many people to fully comprehend and apply directly to their business model. For FNI, it is essentially a comprehensive approach we apply to our work.

Sustainability is about trying to meet current needs while preserving resources for the future; all while making sure we are doing it in a responsible financial manner. No matter what kind of project we build, we need to be good stewards of our environment and balance the competing economic interests that are tied to water resources development.

With respect to developing water supply, we first take into account the full life cycle of water, where we can achieve the most beneficial use of water. Second, we think about ways to procure locally sourced and recycled material to minimize waste and make the most effective use of what we provide our clients. Third, we work with our clients to achieve steady funding streams for the upkeep of those projects well into the future. These principles are all part of our FNI WaterTM initiative to provide comprehensive, environmentally responsible approaches to water supply 35

projects and to implement best practices from planning through operations.

In 2012, FNI joined the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure as a charter member. The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure is the organization focused on creating and maintaining the EnvisionTM rating system for civil infrastructure projects. We are proud to have more than 30 credentialed EnvisionTM sustainability professionals who are now educating clients and applying sustainable principles to civil engineering projects. These staff members are also serving on national committees and as trainers or facilitators at workshops to expand the use of sustainability in the engineering industry.

Kris Polly: How is FNI promoting its company goals?

Mike Nichols: Builders and designers have to be innovative in the way they approach projects. At FNI, we drive that mentality within the organization by taking full advantage of whatever opportunities are out there, such as new technology, new patents, and new products and services. Part of our goal is to make sure that innovation is something that everyone in the organization thinks about, whether they are involved in our technical teams or corporate groups. Each year, our staff members submit projects to our Innovation Awards Competition to showcase projects with innovative techniques. It’s something we’ve done for over 10 years, and it’s great to celebrate and reward the accomplishments of our staff.

For example, for a client in Dallas, we wanted to use low-impact development for that project. It was good for our client, it was good for us, and it was a great opportunity for our staff to learn how to incorporate new ideas into standard projects. This initiative was funded through our research and development (R&D) funding. The technical

A banquet inside the outfall sewer line on October 14, 1927, celebrated completion of the Amarillo storm sewer. Acting City Engineer Marvin C. Nichols is seated second from right. Hawley & Freese designed the storm sewer and, during that project, convinced Marvin Nichols to join them.

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team entered the Low Impact Development Design Competition sponsored by the North Texas Land/Water Sustainability Forum to design a one-mile stretch of South Lamar Street in Dallas. Our team not only won the competition but also was awarded the project by the City of Dallas because it liked our design so much. This experience provided a huge opportunity for our staff to learn new sustainable design principles and apply them to a project.

We also use internal R&D funding to explore innovative technologies. Recently, we used this funding stream to learn how to use Revit Modeling, a new design software program, for future projects. Instead of asking our clients to bear the costs of incorporating new software into the design, we bring innovation and the latest technology to them by working with others first.

Kris Polly: Texas has perhaps the best-developed water planning initiative in the nation. In July, the Texas Water Development Board approved $6 billion in projects.

What is FNI’s role in these activities and in other funding initiatives related to state water planning?

Mike Nichols: When Marvin Nichols served as chair of the Board of Water Development, he wrote a series of papers that discussed future water shortage and transmission issues throughout Texas. FNI references those papers today. When FNI got involved in the state water plans, we recognized that the technical parts of the plans were very good, but the resources to fund the plans were largely unmentioned. The legislature knew the funding issues would become a focus, and FNI made a conscious effort to become involved in that process at the time.

Our goal was not political but educational. We provided critical expertise to the legislative staff about the history of water, the state’s short- and long-term water needs, and the price tag of this development, so they could pass a variety of funding measures that would allow Texas to develop its water resources vision. More recently, we have been working with our clients to help them understand how to obtain funding from those measures. A lot of projects are beginning to move forward now, and the state is doing a wonderful job providing the funding.

Some may consider Texas as the leader in state water planning. Unfortunately, some states either don’t have a good water plan or aren’t able to make use of the one they have. They are behind on planning and implementation and, if faced with a drought, will not be able to weather the challenge. Our country needs to think of a way to provide means and methods for these states to develop and execute water plans, or they may face emergencies in the future that cannot be easily solved.

Kris Polly: We just passed the anniversary of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes. These events have had some significant effects on federal and state policy related to Municipal Water Leader

coastal resiliency and how we need to be thinking about coastal planning and restoration in the future. How has FNI been involved in the coastal restoration and planning efforts along the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina?

Mike Nichols: We have a team of folks who are very focused on coastal design and environmental and habitat restoration. For example, FNI is currently involved in a project with several organizations to redevelop and protect oyster beds that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. We are also involved in reestablishing the shorelines along the coast and wetland areas. Opportunities becoming available from RESTORE [Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States] Act funds will allow cities and counties along the Texas Gulf Coast to rebuild and prepare their coastlines for future natural disasters.

Kris Polly: Please tell our readers what today’s biggest challenge is for the water resources engineering field. What do we need to do at the policy level to help the engineering field solve our water problems?

Mike Nichols: Our biggest challenge is trying to find the right balance between meeting the funding requirements, the regulatory requirements, and the technical needs of the project. Some of the things that really make it difficult to execute a project are changing administrations and changing political priorities. We are often facing a series of environmental rules that make it difficult to develop a project on a reasonable schedule. Moreover, federal and state regulatory bodies sometimes don’t have the resources to process our requests as quickly as we would like.

Kris Polly: What are your thoughts about public-private partnerships (P3s)?

Mike Nichols: Texas has P3 legislation. In our state, the majority of P3s are focused on surface transportation because there has been a real lack of state or federal funding. There have been a few water projects in Texas that used P3s that have been successful. Although it was procured prior to the passage of the P3 legislation in Texas, a great example of a successful P3 project is the Vista Ridge regional water supply project. The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) and Abengoa Vista Ridge project company signed a water transmission and purchase agreement that makes full use of the P3 concept. The project company will build and maintain a well field and a 142-mile transmission pipeline system for production and transportation of up to 50,000 acre-feet of groundwater from rural Burleson County past Austin to Bexar County to connect with SAWS water distribution system.

In this case, the private sector was expected to develop Municipal Water Leader

FNI designed Line J, Section 1 of the Integrated Pipeline Project for Tarrant Regional Water District. Line J is the world’s first pipeline to be recognized by the Envision™ Sustainable Infrastructure Rating System, earning a Silver Award in August 2014.

the entire plan from start to finish. The burden of identifying and developing a reliable water supply rests on the private company. SAWS was also able to shift a significant amount of the future risk to the private company as well; SAWS pays only for water made available. It is not clear if P3s will be a big part of the state’s water resources development, because the state has done such a good job providing funding.

Kris Polly: Finally, what do you see as the next major engineering adaptation for municipal water suppliers?

Mike Nichols: Water reuse, conservation, and desalination will continue to be major drivers. Aquifer storage and recovery is likely going to be the preferred method of banking water over surface water infrastructure because it is environmentally sound, does not evaporate, and can be done without the large costs associated with building storage above ground. I believe that public education about the state of our water resources will increase around the country. People today are a lot more informed about the environment and our resources than they were just a decade or two ago. I believe that reuse will continue to expand in areas in which new water supplies cannot be developed or transferred.

Lastly, although interstate water disputes have persisted for years and will continue to do so in the future, I believe that changes in the federal and state approach toward dealing with water allocation and reallocation in interstate basins need to be considered. There is only so much new development that can be accomplished in some waterscarce areas. We need to be able to move water around between water basins within and between states. The rest of the world has figured this out. Now, it is our job to think outside the box to resolve these issues in the coming years, and I am proud to say that FNI has the innovation to help our decisionmakers do that.

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CLASSIFIED LISTINGS 38

PRINCIPAL WATER RESOURCES PLANNER Closing Date/Time: Salary: Job Type: Location: Department: FLSA:

Continuous $9,877.00 - $12,006.00 Monthly Full-time Position Castaic Lake Water Agency, 27234 Bouquet Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, California Water Resources Exempt

View the Principal Water Resources Planner Recruitment Brochure at http://clwa.org/ wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Recruitment-Brochure-Principal-Water-Resources-Planner-CLWA. pdf and submit your application online.

This job posting will remain open until filled.

For information on posting to the Classified Listings, please e-mail Municipal.Water.Leader@WaterStrategies.com

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2015 CALENDAR

September 26–30 Water Environment Foundation, 88th Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference, Chicago, IL September 30–October 1 Texas Desalination Association, Texas Desal 2015, Austin, TX October 6–8 Association of Clean Water Administrators, National Stormwater Roundtable, Philadelphia, PA October 13–16 American Water Works Association, Water Infrastructure Conference, Bethesda, MD October 11–14 Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, Executive Management Conference, Savannah, GA October 14–16 Texas Water Conservation Association, Fall Meeting, San Antonio, TX October 22–23 Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, Annual Conference, Fort Worth, TX October 27 Utah Water Users Association, Utah Water Summit Conference, Provo, UT October 28–30 WESTCAS, Fall Conference, Tucson, AZ November 4–6 National Water Resources Association, Annual Conference, Denver, CO November 6–9 American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, Annual Meeting and Expo, Chicago, IL November 15–19 American Water Works Association, Water Quality Technology Conference, Salt Lake City, UT November 16–19 American Water Resources Association, Annual Conference, Denver, CO December 1–4 Association of California Water Agencies, Fall Conference & Exhibition, Indian Wells, CA December 16–18 Colorado River Water Users Association, Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV December 15–17 National Ground Water Association, Groundwater Expo, Las Vegas, NV January 20–22, 2016 U.S. Conference of Mayors, 84th Winter Meeting, Washington, DC February 1–4, 2016 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Winter Conference, Charleston, SC February 23–25, 2016 Association of California Water Agencies, Legislative Conference, Washington, DC March 7–9, 2016 National Waterways Conference, Legislative Summit, Washington DC ___________________________________________________________________________

To include your event in the calendar, e-mail Municipal.Water.Leader@waterstrategies.com.