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I have spent my entire career in the operations side of water utilities. I began as a part time student engineer in the City of San Diego’s Water Department’s Production Division and am now Director of Operations and Maintenance at the San Diego County Water Authority responsible for a staff of 85 and an annual budget of $19 million. Each step along the way has provided new opportunities to expand my operational knowledge and build the lasting relationships that are critical to job success and career development when you’re an engineer in an operations environment.

A fundamental fact has been lost in the discussion of Metropolitan Water District’s recent decision to underwrite most of the cost of the California WaterFix: MWD knowingly overpaid by billions of dollars with no certainty of return on its big gamble. The agency’s own documents clearly show that MWD won’t get any more water for spending $10.8 billion on two giant water-conveyance tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta than it would for spending $5.2 billion on a single tunnel.

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water” — Benjamin Franklin. Cape Town, South Africa, faced a scary scenario last month: The city of 4 million residents was warned by officials of an impending “Day Zero” when they’ll run out of fresh water. We know a bit here about what that feels like! The Cape Town date has been mercifully pushed back to late August — and may be averted by seasonal rains.

The Equinox Project of the Center for Sustainable Energy has a pretty good idea of what comprises “quality of life,” having just released its 2018 San Diego Regional Quality of Life Dashboard reporting on 15 indicators of just that … quality of life. Available to everyone online, this is the ninth annual dashboard.