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Welcome to The Executive Exchange, a premier podcast series for on-the-go senior executives. Each episode features short, impactful podcasts where industry leaders share key insights and experiences from the water industry.
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange 15 minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders from around the globe.
[00:00:11] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Anselmo Collins, the Chief Operating Officer at LADWP, that's Los Angeles Department for Water and Power, and he's the Chief Operating Officer for the water part of it.
[00:00:25] Piers Clark: Anselmo, it's wonderful to have you with us today.
[00:00:28] Anselmo Collins: Thank you, Piers. I'm glad to be here.
[00:00:30] Piers Clark: We like to know a little bit about the background of our speaker at the start. So can you give me the potted history of how you got into the role you' re in today?
[00:00:39] Anselmo Collins: First of all, I've been with the LA Department of Water and Power for 35 years. I started as a student engineer many, many years ago and then I was hired on full-time. And I've had the fortune of being able to work in several other divisions, there's five divisions and I've been able to work in three of the five.
[00:00:58] Anselmo Collins: And four and a half years ago, I was selected to be the head of the water system.
[00:01:03] Piers Clark: I don't mean to blow smoke here, but you really don't look like a man who can have been working for 35 years. It is very impressive. It must be that Los Angeles sunshine.
[00:01:12] Anselmo Collins: And the water.
[00:01:13] Piers Clark: Well, let's talk about LADWP now, Department for Water and Power. Does it do wastewater? How many people does it serve? Where exactly in California are you?
[00:01:24] Anselmo Collins: We are actually the largest municipal utility in the country. But if you only look at the water system, we're the second largest municipal water system in the country. The state of LA is comprised around approximately 473 square miles, and we have around 4 million customers that we serve water and power every single day.
[00:01:43] Anselmo Collins: We are right next to the coast, beautiful Pacific Ocean. And we provide, on a daily basis, approximately 450 million gallons of water to our customers. Most of it is coming from hundreds of miles away. So, 90% of the water we serve our customers is actually imported.
[00:02:01] Anselmo Collins: It does not rain a whole lot here, so we depend on water that's coming from aqueducts that are bringing the water from Northern California down to Southern California and also from the Colorado River, which is east of us to the Colorado River Aqueduct.
[00:02:15] Piers Clark: We've done podcasts in the past with people at Las Vegas talking about Lake Mead and the water shortages that they've got there, which is a brilliant segue to what we're going to talk about today, which is around the water resource challenges that you are facing in Los Angeles and some of the strategies that LADWP has looked into to address those.
[00:02:37] Piers Clark: So how stark is the water resource challenge that you face, and why did you need to address this problem?
[00:02:44] Anselmo Collins: The best way to illustrate this is back in 2022. It was a third year of three year drought, in the entire state of California.
[00:02:53] Anselmo Collins: It was so bad that it got to the point where the state of California could not sell water to our whole saler because there was not enough water in the reservoirs and the storage facilities for the state. So, we had to basically put all of our customers on a water budget.
[00:03:09] Anselmo Collins: The way we did that is that, typically in Los Angeles, you're allowed to water your lawn three days a week. We have water conservation ordinances that allowed us to go down to two days a week to manage demand.
[00:03:22] Anselmo Collins: The interesting thing in Southern California is that you have this severe climate change that's taken place. There are years when we have more water than we can actually serve our customers, but then we have many other years when there's not enough water. So that climate change, that "climate whiplash" is what we call it, is one of the reasons why we are investing in what we call "local water supply".
[00:03:44] Anselmo Collins: The other reason, quite honestly, is because there's a lot of earthquakes here in Los Angeles. And it just so happens that the three aqueducts that serve water to Los Angeles all cross this fault called the San Andreas fault.
[00:03:57] Anselmo Collins: So the State Water Project has their own aqueduct, the California Aqueduct. The Los Angeles Aqueduct, which we own and operate, the state of LA does. And then we also have the Colorado River Aqueduct, which is owned and operated by the wholesaler, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
[00:04:13] Anselmo Collins: And all of these aqueducts are crossing or close proximity to the San Andreas fault. So, because of climate change and because of seismic activity, we decided that we needed to invest in local water supply so that we're less dependent on climate dependent sources. And also, when we have a seismic activity, we have the ability to continue to serve water to our customers .
[00:04:35] Piers Clark: Thank you for that. You've made that very clear as to the scale of the problem and also some of the unique challenges that you've got in Southern California.
[00:04:43] Piers Clark: Now, there are three areas I know we're gonna talk about, but let's start with the one that you've done the most work on, which is groundwater remediation.
[00:04:51] Anselmo Collins: The city of Los Angeles has access to approximately five groundwater basins. The largest one by far is called the San Fernando Basin. Unfortunately, it's contaminated because of, 40, 50 years ago, the way that certain industries were disposing of chemicals, it was basically leaching into the groundwater basin.
[00:05:09] Anselmo Collins: So we have actually been working for the last several years on facilities for groundwater remediation, where basically we're able to pump out the plume contaminants, remove it from the environment, remove it from the water, and then put the water into our system for drinking purposes.
[00:05:26] Anselmo Collins: This is a pretty significant investment. We're investing over $600 million on these three different projects. They're all about completed right now, and we're hoping to put 'em into production later this year. That's gonna allow us to be able to then pull out the plume contaminants and as we work on projects to put more water into the ground, the groundwater basin will be clean.
[00:05:48] Piers Clark: And of course, get this right and it will be there for the generations to come.
[00:05:52] Piers Clark: I have to ask, has the source control been done to stop those pollutants continuing to hit the groundwater?
[00:05:59] Anselmo Collins: Some of that has been done. What we decided to do here in the city of LA is that there are certain responsible parties for the pollution that we have identified, and we're working with them for them to provide some of the funding.
[00:06:11] Anselmo Collins: But we did not wanna wait for those negotiations to take place and be completed because time is of the essence. So, we have began, the projects were almost completed, but we continue to go after all the responsible parties for the contamination.
[00:06:26] Anselmo Collins: We've installed a series of monitoring wells in the San Fernando Valley to allow us to see how the plume moves. We want to contain it because we don't want it to contaminate all the well fields that we have in the valley.
[00:06:38] Piers Clark: And just help me with the scale of the groundwater recharge . How much water you hoping to extract from that?
[00:06:45] Anselmo Collins: In the San Fernando Valley, we have groundwater rights, approximately 90,000 acre feet of water per year that we can actually extract.
[00:06:54] Piers Clark: And for anyone listening that is exactly as it describes. It is take an acre and put a foot of water on it, that is how much water it is. Do you know How much that is in gallons or megaliters at all?
[00:07:06] Anselmo Collins: Well, one acre foot is 326,000 gallons. We're talking about billions of gallons of water.
[00:07:13] Anselmo Collins: Just to put it in perspective too, the San Fernando Basin, which is the one that we're talking about, it has a capacity of 550,000 acre feet of water. It is basically having an underground reservoir that right now we're not able to take full advantage of.
[00:07:28] Anselmo Collins: I think the next step for us really is, once we clean that out, how do we put water in there? And for us, we're taking two different approaches.
[00:07:35] Anselmo Collins: The first approach is actually due to storm water capture. In Los Angeles, it does not rain a lot. We get approximately 15 inches of rain per season, per year. What happens is we work with the county. The county has the responsibility for flood control. They're able to collect the rainwater in their flood control dams. And after the storm passes, they work with us where they release the water and we can divert the water into spreading basins that are scattered throughout the San Fernando Valley. If we don't divert it into a spreading basin, that water makes its way down to the LA river, eventually to the ocean. So, it's a great partnership.
[00:08:13] Anselmo Collins: The other thing that we're doing is we developed a Stormwater Capture Parks Project where what we do is we will go into parts of the city in the San Fernando Valley where you have parks that are in disrepair.
[00:08:26] Anselmo Collins: We basically are able to remove the park, install an underground infiltration basin, and then we restore the park on top of it. That infiltration basin is able to capture runoff that's coming down the street, we divert it in there, we are able to separate any kind of solids from it, and then it percolates into the ground.
[00:08:46] Anselmo Collins: Not only do you have a water supply and water quality project, but you also combine it with a recreational open space benefit to the community.
[00:08:55] Piers Clark: I love it. I love a virtuous spiral of improvement.
[00:08:59] Piers Clark: Now, what about contaminants in these storm waters? Because I assume it's coming off roads and therefore we've got microplastics and general nastiness that's been on the roads. How do you deal with that?
[00:09:11] Anselmo Collins: We install separators that allow us to remove some of those contaminants as the water goes into these underground infiltration basins. Further treatment will be done so that then that water can continue to go into the ground.
[00:09:24] Piers Clark: Brilliant. Nice. Now, is there another piece that we haven't touched on yet?
[00:09:28] Anselmo Collins: The third component for us here is recycled water. Right now we have almost 200 sites where we are providing different qualities of recycled water. What we're gonna do is that we're gonna use recycled water for two purposes.
[00:09:41] Anselmo Collins: One is called indirect potable reuse, where you're taking wastewater, you're treating it to a higher level, and we're gonna use that to also recharge the groundwater basins.
[00:09:52] Anselmo Collins: The second part of it is called direct potable reuse, so DPR. In 2024, the State of California passed laws that allow us to take recycled water, treat it to even higher levels of treatment, and then use it to augment our drinking water system.
[00:10:07] Anselmo Collins: We have four wastewater plants in the city of Los Angeles. Our goal is to recycle water from all four of them. Right now we have a project that is in construction at the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant. This plant is owned and operated by the Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment Department. We're partnering with them.
[00:10:26] Anselmo Collins: It's gonna produce, by 2027, 25 million gallons of water per day of recycled water that we're gonna use to recharge the groundwater basin. We are gonna expand it to go up to 45 million gallons of water per day for indirect portable reuse. Once again putting it into the groundwater basin.
[00:10:44] Anselmo Collins: Then we have our big program which is called Pure Water Los Angeles. This is a multi-decade, approximately three decades, $26 billion investment that the city of LA is making. And what it's gonna do is take water from the Hyperion Water Reclamation plant. This is the largest plant the city of Los Angeles owns.
[00:11:05] Anselmo Collins: Most of that water right now, once it is treated, is discharged into the ocean. We only recycle around 25%. The goal is to recycle every drop of water. That has the potential to produce up to 210 million gallons of water per day.
[00:11:20] Anselmo Collins: We're gonna do it in three phases. The first two phases will be 50 million gallons, second phase, 50 million gallons, and then the rest will be in the third phase. The first two phases will be mainly for indirect potable reuse, once again going into the groundwater. The last phase will be direct portable reuse.
[00:11:39] Anselmo Collins: The challenge here for us is that the wastewater plant is around 30 miles away from our filtration plant. So we are gonna actually take that water, treat it to high level, and we're gonna pump it uphill 30 miles, and we're gonna be able to get it all the way to the headwaters of our filtration plant. Then we can mingle it with surface water from our aqueduct, run it to the filtration plant, and then we have the ability to send that combined water to 70% of our service territory.
[00:12:08] Anselmo Collins: And the reason why it's important is because that would really allow us to minimize our dependency on purchase imported water and we have more control locally of the water supply.
[00:12:20] Piers Clark: It's absolutely brilliant. And of course in 30 years time, I suspect you won't be Chief Operating Officer of LADWP but you will hopefully still be around to see the fruits of your
[00:12:32] Piers Clark: labor.
[00:12:33] Anselmo Collins: Absolutely, yes. These are great projects that not only provide water, but also it provides economic development and workforce development because the need for skilled labor to operate and maintain these facilities as they're being built, it's gonna increase significantly. So, it's a source of local jobs also for our community that we serve. So, you get multi benefits once again with these type of projects. That's why I'm excited about it.
[00:12:58] Piers Clark: Anselmo, I could hear you talk about this project and the passion with which you are sharing these stories. It's bubbling through. It's just wonderful.
[00:13:06] Piers Clark: But we are running out of time and we always like to finish with a personal question and that is: if you could go back in time, if you could go back 35 years, what advice would you give that young graduate that was just turning up at LADWP, what advice would you give him?
[00:13:24] Anselmo Collins: The advice I would give myself would be to make sure to take the time to develop those personal and professional relationships. I think the water industry, as we continue to move along, it really tells you that we need to work and partner with other people, not just in the water industry but also the wastewater industry.
[00:13:43] Anselmo Collins: Being able to develop projects that are multi benefits are extremely significant to the community and to our rate payers. So, taking the time to develop those relationships, not just in the water sector, but other sectors as well, is very important.
[00:13:57] Anselmo Collins: And take the time to get to know people and develop your own network, because those are the folks that you're gonna partner with later on in your career when you're trying to deliver these size projects and programs for the city.
[00:14:09] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Anselmo Collins, the Chief Operating Officer for water at LADWP, and we've been talking about some of the water resource challenges and solutions that they've been looking at.
[00:14:27] Piers Clark: Thank you to our sponsors, and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing, and keep safe.