We dive into the heart of water infrastructure challenges and innovations in our latest podcast episode. Our guest, Troy Hayes, brings over two decades of experience from the City of Phoenix, where he oversees a vast utilities operation. His journey from engineering to operations highlights pivotal shifts towards managing one of the largest utilities in the U.S., emphasizing the generational legacy and the evolution of water systems from his father's time to now.
Troy's narrative underscores the critical balance between maintaining existing infrastructure and innovating for future demands. He shares insights on transitioning a mothballed water treatment plant to meet growing needs, showcasing a proactive approach to resource management and sustainability. The conversation also touches on the complexities of operating within a political landscape, where long-term planning must align with shorter electoral cycles, stressing the importance of foresight in utility management.
The dialogue further explores the challenges of workforce development, community engagement, and leveraging data for operational efficiency. Troy's focus on education and adapting to technological advancements reflects a broader vision for the water industry, aiming to ensure reliability, safety, and sustainability for future generations. His leadership philosophy, rooted in building upon the groundwork laid by predecessors and pushing the envelope on water resource management, encapsulates the essence of stewarding vital public utilities through times of change.
In wrapping up, the discussion highlights the significance of storytelling in public utility management, advocating for clear, compelling narratives to engage communities and stakeholders. Troy's ambition to leave a lasting impact through strategic infrastructure and resource planning, coupled with innovative approaches to water reuse, sets a forward-thinking agenda for addressing the pressing needs of urban water systems in the 21st century.
City of Phoenix Water Website: https://www.phoenix.gov/waterservices
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
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Speaker 1: Tremendous challenges and opportunities exist right now for our nation's water infrastructure. In this 15-minute podcast, the industry's top leaders and innovative minds share their knowledge and insights for ensuring our water systems are operating safely and efficiently. These discussions are designed to motivate and create vibrant 21st-century water systems and the innovative workforce required to lead and operate them. This is 21st Century Water with your host, Aquasight Founder and CEO, Mahesh Lunani.
Mahesh Lunani: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I'm with Troy Hayes, Water Services Director at the City of Phoenix. In his current role, Troy oversees over 1,500 employees and runs a utilities business in the fifth-largest city in the country. He's providing services to over 1.6 million residents and has been with the city for over 20 years. Prior to that, he was in the private sector for six years. Troy Hayes is a registered engineer in the state of Arizona, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona, and an MBA from the University of Phoenix.
I think it's going to be really interesting insights to understand from Troy the tremendous population growth, how he's built this infrastructure to date, and how it will continue to sustain this in the future, especially in light of the challenges in Southwest. I look forward to learning more. Troy, welcome.
Troy Hayes: Yes, thanks for having me.
Mahesh: No, real pleasure. Now, you've been 20 years with the City of Phoenix, and you're at the top of the Department now. What are the three big turning points in your journey to get to where you are?
Troy: I'm sure there's a lot more than three, but as I think back over my career, I grew up in the water and wastewater industry, meaning that my father was a deputy director in the City of Phoenix, so I grew up around water treatment plants my whole life. As I was getting out of school, it seemed natural to lend itself to move towards water and wastewater engineering. I got out of school and started working at a private engineering firm doing water and wastewater all throughout the Southwest, but primarily here in the valley around Phoenix.
As I transitioned into the City of Phoenix, I would say the first big pivot was moving from engineering into operations. When I first came to the city, I spent the first seven years or so at the city in charge of the water treatment plants. I was responsible for the engineering activities of the water treatment plants. In 2010, the Department asked me to pivot and go out and be the deputy director of water production and so responsible for all of the water treatment plants, the water system operations and the remote facilities for the Department.
After that, they asked me, in 2014, to move into management to actually become one of the assistant directors in charge of the water utility, and so responsible for the whole side of the water operations. It's not necessarily the water treatment or the water production and things like that, but moving into responsibility of meters and distribution and all the other parts of the water utility until finally, three years ago, the city asking me to move into the director job of responsible for both water and wastewater activities of both utilities, which are some of the largest in the United States.
Mahesh: It's fascinating. This is a generational service for you.
Troy: It is. It is. It's funny, we go out and I do new employee orientation with the new employees that are coming in and we do it at our Deer Valley Water Treatment Plant, which is the facility that my father was the plant manager at for lots of years. I have lots of memories of being in middle school, those types of years of running around in the empty fields and chasing rabbits and things like that and being able to go on the tours as they had open houses in the 1980s that I would come in on Saturday and hang out and do the treatment plant tours to be able to then talk at that time about coagulation and lime softening and all the other things that Phoenix was done at the time.
Not necessarily understanding what those meant, but then to fast forward, here I am, 30 to 40 years later to actually be in charge of that Department. It's kind of awe-inspiring, I guess.
Mahesh: No, it is. Now I know how you got into chemical engineering and how all those dinner table conversations. It's fantastic that you've been serving the very city that you grew up where your father served. The infrastructure now compared to in '80s that you were is phenomenal. You look at 8 treatment plants, 300 plus stations, 7000 miles of water mains that most residents don't see, obviously, 5500 miles of sewer mains and tens and thousands of valves and hydrants. How do you manage your day-to-day business, especially given you came from the operations side, and what does day in the life look like for you?
Troy: You can't do this job or any job of a large utility without great people of 1500 employees. Unfortunately, I can't go out and I can't interact with all of them all day long and I can't go walk the basins as you could in a smaller utility. You're relying upon that great staff that you have up there to do what they're supposed to do and to be the eyes and ears of the public. That's really what we really rely upon.
My average day is filled with meetings and council briefings and briefings with the city, management and things like that, where a typical day may be 8 to 15 meetings a day or so of getting briefed on different items or working on briefings with the city council to bring them up to speed of the different challenges that we have that we're trying to work through to make sure that we're moving into the general direction in which they think that we should be moving.
Mahesh: It reminds me, 8 to 15 meetings a day, the number of context changes, even in my role as CEO of the company, but in your role, obviously, CEO of utility, the number of context changes you have to do is phenomenal, right?
Troy: Yes.
Mahesh: How do you as a leader keep up with the decisions you have to make from one meeting to another meeting that could be a capital planning versus rates versus an operations versus maintenance? What have you learned as a leader in this space on making decisions on a day-to-day basis?
Troy: Yes, I would say the biggest thing for a utility of our size is, as you alluded to, is just the pace. The pace in which things are moving by you. I think one of the things and one of the things that I rely upon in really going back to my base of operations and engineering to be able to rely upon of what the norms should be and be able to watch for things that are abnormalities. As you said, we're shifting from a meeting in the morning on the finances of each of the utilities and how we're going to be structuring bills and things like that to then move into complex engineering analysis of drought infrastructure and how we're going to do that.
Then, to finish the day up, with, HR and people type of the things that we're doing, that you're shifting and moving all the time. What I would say is coming up through the organization as I did, is I got to do little spots and moments in each of the operating divisions and understanding of what their background is and understanding what their challenges and their real capabilities of doing to be able to push in certain areas or to be able to say, "That seems like a big problem, but it's not going to be. This is all going to work itself out or this is where we need to shift our resources to because this is something that could grow into a larger thing that we really need to manage."
I guess that's really going back to having good people in the positions around me to be able to leverage their expertise and to bring what they're bringing to the table as well. Not necessarily all of them are engineers, there's chemists, there's geologists, there's all of these professionals around me that are really excellent at what they do, and to be able to utilize that interaction with them where they're bringing their expertise and to rely upon that to make the decisions that I have to make.
Mahesh: I can only imagine being in your shoes, it's not for everyone. I want to talk about CEOs as those that lead the department. You have to understand the challenge and confront the challenge. That's the only way you make the progress. What are your top challenges when it comes to water and what are your top challenges when it comes to wastewater?
Troy: I would say the number one fundamental challenge of the water utility, which then translates a little bit into the wastewater utility, is that in all areas of the world, water is that foundation of public health, economic opportunity and really the quality of life in our modern cities. To be able to have that reliable service that we can go out to the residents and businesses that says that you can invest here. The economic integrity, it really relies upon us getting right. For a city like Phoenix in the Southwest, as you alerted to when we started this discussion, we're held to a higher standard.
Here we are in the middle of the Sonoran Desert with climate change adaptations that we're seeing affect precipitation and snowfalls and really putting stresses on the system. How can we ensure that we can provide safe, clean, reliable drinking water to our customers and businesses forever and ever? That's really the challenge that we're working on and that's really the challenge recently that that's been a little bit more difficult that we've had to put that thinking cap on.
What I would say is, for the city of Phoenix, one of the things that's in our advantage is it didn't really sneak up on us that it's hot and dry here. It's been hot and dry here for thousands of years. I really get to rely upon right now of all of those water directors that came before me, all of the planning that they did in the 1940s and the 1950s of getting additional water resources to be able to utilize those decisions that they've made so that I can leverage that and be in a better place now.
I would say beyond that big huge challenge, then it's really making sure that we have the community's buy-in and support so that when we need to adjust rates to be able to pay for those challenging things that we need to overcome, whether that's on the capital side or the operations side, that you have that community support that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're looking out for their best interests. We're getting the resources in place that they can rely upon us so that when we need to raise rates there's an understanding that we're doing it because we need to do. That also translates to both the water and wastewater utilities.
What I would say is one of the unique things that we have now is we're starting to see a blend of a one water movement between the water and wastewater as we're starting to look at wastewater as a water resource far more than we did before. I would say, in Arizona, we've been recycling water for decades, back in the 1980s and 1970s. It wasn't uncommon for us to be utilizing effluent to offset agricultural needs or other things like that, but I would say that it's really become more poignant of looking at wastewater as a water source. I think both of those are the challenges that we have for both utilities as well as it's what all utilities sees. It's just aging infrastructure.
With all the infrastructure that you highlighted before, all those things have the end of useful life. Phoenix as a city is a teenage kind of a city. We grew up in the 1960s and '70s where a lot of our infrastructure came into place. That infrastructure having a 75-year or 100-year life is going to be coming into our full bloom of having the other responsibilities of being able to rehabilitate and replace those. That really goes back to that community buy-in and really understanding of what we do and that communication with them so that when we have those challenges, we're able to have the resources that we need.
Mahesh: What is very interesting for me, you said you are a beneficiary of those before you that set the infrastructure and resources up. Now you must be thinking, "Okay, well, what do I do now for the next 50 to 70 years" so your successors could be the beneficiary of the plants you're setting up. Thinking multi-decade long period, then you are operating in a political environment that's only a four-year election cycle. That's a very difficult balance.
Troy: Yes. Unfortunately, with our elected officials, with our mayor and our city council, and as I said, is really everybody growing up in a very hot, dry climate. Like I said, didn't sneak up on us that it gets to be 120 here in the summertime and it doesn't rain very much. We have that basis as a community that this is something that we always have to keep our eye on and always working towards. I think that's really the challenge for me is to not necessarily rest on what the people that came before me did, but really then build upon that.
A couple of our initiatives that we're working on are really that way of trying to add additional water resources to our portfolio that would put us even to better positions as drought continues.
Mahesh: Right. Excellent. Excellent. Let me talk about the budget. Obviously, everything is budget, is about O&M. It's about capital budget. What's your next two years budget looks like? Where are your biggest investments in the coming years?
Troy: Our operating budgets on the waterside, we spend about $300 million a year or so on the waterside. Obviously, that's our biggest operations with the most facilities and the most electricity and the most chemicals and as well as buying raw water and things like that. On the wastewater side, it's about half that amount. We're about $140 million a year on the wastewater side for an operating budget. Then as we move into the capital side, we spend-- it fluctuates year to year depending on what we're going to do. I would say in general, on the waterside, we spend about $400 or $500 million a year for capital investments, and about $300 million a year on the wastewater side.
The biggest investments, as I alluded to earlier, is really rehabilitating and replacing that existing infrastructure and making sure that we're staying up on that. On both of the capital programs, it's really focusing on pipes. Obviously, with 7000 miles of water line and 5000 miles of wastewater line that were put in the 1950s, '60s and '70s or so that there's a lot of our funds that go back to really putting back in and making sure that we're having that infrastructure out in the streets that are reliable that we can reduce our water main breaks, making sure that as a water resource that we're managing that by managing that capital investment.
The other thing that we have on the wastewater side is our city council, this past month has adopted our approval to move forward with the Cave Creek Water Reclamation Plant. This was a reclamation plant that was built in the 1990s. As we had the Great Recession and things like that, it was shut off, the flows were diverted to our very large wastewater treatment plants. What we're seeing is growth and up in those areas are putting pressure on our collection system, and so we're having to bring that back up online.
With the forethought now, as I alluded to earlier, that the wastewater effluent can be utilized as a water resource for the drinking waterside. We're going to be putting in the technology now that would allow those resources to be taken up to drinking water potable standards. We're currently working with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to ensure that Arizona has the regulations that are needed to eventually allow that. They've ensured us that those will be done here by the end of the calendar year.
The reconstruction of this facility and those rules and us really needing to add additional water resources to our portfolio are really aligning great in the sense of we can really put those thoughts in and really start planning to utilize those resources in ways that we hadn't before.
Mahesh: Sounds like you're going to rebuild a mothball treatment plant and fire this up so you can be ready for the growth that you've been looking at.
Troy: It is, yes. It's about an 80 MGD, 80 million gallons a day facility that was, like I said, turned off in 2010 or so. It's really ready to come back up online with a new thought and a new refreshed look with adding in technology that will bring us into the potentially the 22nd century, I guess.
Mahesh: Yes, the next century. Drought, everybody talks about-- obviously, this is not a timely topic, because today and tomorrow you're going to get 10 feet of snow in Sierra Mountains. It's really not at least that part of the country, but it's a big topic in Arizona. As you said, it's dry and it's hot. What's your mitigation strategy?
Troy: We have a couple of strategies with respect to drought. One of them is to go out and secure additional water resources. As I said, in my time frame here as the director, we're not really resting on what we had. The previous director, when I was an assistant director over the water utilities, there was a large focus on getting drought infrastructure into place.
The way that Phoenix grew and the way that we had local Salt and Verde River system water versus Colorado River system water, we were bifurcated in the way our systems were built. We put a lot of infrastructure into place with large pump stations and large pipelines to be able to move our resources around of wherever we had it to wherever we needed it. Now the focus in the past few years has been going out and really trying to focus on getting additional resources as much as possible. Working with other local valley cities here, potentially expanding one of our local dams to be able to catch additional snowpack or rainfall that we have.
One of the things that we're seeing as a consequence of climate change or whatever we see is happening is we're seeing periods of wetter wets and drier dries. We saw a period of 20-some years where we had drier dries, but that's sometimes followed by periods of extreme wetter wets we've had in the last decade, a thousand-year storm. As you were mentioning up in the Sierra Nevadas, you're getting these large winter storms that are coming through to make sure that we have the infrastructure on a regional basis in place to be able to catch those periods when we have those resources to be able to utilize to extend through those drier dries.
The other thing that we're out doing is, as I said, is we're out looking at our wastewater and eventually working towards utilizing that and putting that through an advanced purification facility of taking that to drinking water standards. Water that we would have normally have discharged down the river, we are now looking at infrastructure or treatment capabilities of taking that wastewater and cleaning it past drinking water standards to be able to potentially put that into our system here in the next decade or so.
Mahesh: I know. How do you build an infrastructure that can handle the highs of storms and snow packs that you don't know when it's going to come? It is a very interesting challenge at least for engineers. I want to talk about pain points. There's many pain points, whether it's workforce, whether it's water loss, energy management. You spend a lot of money in energy and chemicals, optimization, rates. Pick ones that are most relevant for you. What would that be, and what's your solution to these pain points that you encounter?
Troy: The most recent one that we've encountered, I think, with most utilities is that workforce of really trying to get that next generation to buy into coming into the water and wastewater industries. We've implemented a lot of trainee or apprentice-type programs to be able to bring in that next workforce that may not necessarily have been trained or have the skills at, but have the basic skills, the basic math, the basic understanding of mechanics and things like that to be able to train those into the next water and wastewater operators.
The other thing that we were very fortunate that our city council identified is to make sure that we had the pay structures into place to be able to attract that talent pool in. It's a shame and a challenge that we have to compete with the fast food jobs and things like that of water plant operators and things like that. Making sure that we have that pay structure in place to be able to track that talent pool was critical. We're starting to see our vacancy rates close up back to pre-pandemic normals kind of an area with both of those tactics.
I would say the other one is, I've talked a couple of times about today, it's really getting that community support so that if you need to adjust rates, whether that's to account for increases in chemical cost or labor costs or the rising cost of the capital programs that we have to make sure that we have that community support to be able to raise rates to the appropriate levels to be able to address those concerns. I think that's the biggest thing.
The other one is really we are data in overload in some sense. If you go to most water and wastewater utilities, we can tell you down to the one minute or the one second of what's going on with our water quality or our pressures out in the system and to be able to-- how do you have systems into place to be able to utilize and to be able to analyze those so that we can effectively use that data to help operate the systems. I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we have.
Mahesh: No, data mining is important for utilities. We definitely see value. Now, the other topic you brought up was this able to convince the community. One of the things I mentioned two weeks ago at the NAWQA Leadership Summit is most utility leaders should be great storytellers. To be able to tell the value of water in a way similar to what you would tell in a shark tank. You would put 30 seconds, you got to convince the resident why you're increasing the rates by 10%, 15%.
Troy: The beauty of all that is most of us are engineers and scientists. How do you adapt people with technical backgrounds? That's why we employ folks like Jimena and all of that to help us as we say, "Here's what we have. Here's the technical reasons why we do things. Help me put this in a story that people can really understand." Like I said, I think the story itself sells. People want safe, clean, reliable drinking water and wastewater service. We want to treat that wastewater to a level whether we're eventually moving that into drinking water or releasing that back into the environment, that's of the highest quality.
Obviously, we want the highest quality drinking water services. I think overall, we get that buy-in is just-- can we stay out of our own way of getting caught up in our technical jargon and our acronyms and other things to be able to come down to that most basic Cuban level to be able to explain what we do and why we need to do this.
Mahesh: You bring up a really interesting point. Just off script, Got Milk was a campaign that stuck in our head and it captured the imagination of every American. I posed this challenge actually in that summit. How about "No water, no life"? Simple campaign that a resident can understand. If you get no water, you get no life. We got to have our own Got Milk version that is compelling for every utility leader like yourself that could be catered. Switching topics, this is one of my favorites, circular economy. I believe in the next two decades, it's going to be fascinating how people can reuse water, recycle, take care of the nutrients coming out, produce gas, you name it. What is the city's plan in this space?
Troy: Luckily, the city of Phoenix, as well as the state of Arizona, is we've been recycling our wastewater for decades. Most of the effluent coming out of our largest regional wastewater treatment plant goes to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. This is the largest nuclear-generating station that's not built on a navigable body of water. They rely upon that effluent for cooling water and other things that they have out there.
To go beyond that, like I said, it's really something that Phoenix has embraced for a long time, whether that's figuring out ways to apply our biosolids. In the last five years, we've gotten to a partnership with a company that's taking our biogas and cleaning it and selling that on the open market, installing solar energy at our treatment plants to be able to offset our energy costs and lower that footprint. Going towards battery backups and things like that is really helpful. Then ultimately, as I alluded to earlier, it's really taking that effluent to the highest and most beneficial use, which is trading it to a drinking water standard to be able to put that into our water portfolio.
Here in the state of Arizona, we have to show to the state of Arizona that we have 100-year water supplies. We take our water demands, project that out to over 100 years from now to say this is how much water demand that we're going to have and to show that we have the resources in place to be able to address those needs. In the state of Arizona, nobody is utilizing effluent to offset those needs for drinking water standards.
It's really exciting time here that we have-- like I said, the rules are coming into place and we're starting to put the technologies into place that's going to be able to add a really new water bucket that's drought-resistant and all those other things that really allows us to move forward with adding a resource that really hasn't been utilized before. At the end of the day, I think in both the water and wastewater utilities, all of the by-products that we have is how can we put those back to beneficial use and really minimize our impact on the planet that we live on.
Mahesh: Right. As an engineer in you and probably me, this is fascinating to be able to look and deploy all this stuff. Now, this brings to my next question from a technology point of view, in this case, digital technology. What are you most excited about? Can you describe one or two innovations you'd like to deploy?
Troy: I alluded to it earlier, it's really utilizing that data. I think that is something that we don't do. I think with technology, as it's evolving, is really trying to utilize the data that we have and whether that's looking for anomalies out in the system. One of the things that we've deployed out in the sewershed, which will help us with sewershed management water quality wise, is going out and analyzing the different constituents that we may or may not have in the wastewater system to ensure that people aren't putting things down the drains that they shouldn't be or give us issues on the drinking water side as we convert wastewater into drinking water.
It's putting remote isolated water quality analyzers out in the sewershed to be able to analyze what's coming in so that we can react to that and be able to go out and address those issues is something that's emerging. We have similar types of things on the waterside where you'll put water quality sensors up on the watershed to be able to help you with normal things of turbidity and TOC and other things that we have on the waterside. As we really start to look at our wastewater as a newly emerging watershed to make sure that we have sensors out in the system to be able to understand what's going on with those.
Then on the waterside, it's really looking at all of the operational and water quality data that we have to be able to synthesize that down to be able to give it in a real relatable, easy-to-use format so that our operators can utilize that to either identify potential problems or to use electricity more efficiently, really using that technology to go that distance and take it to the next level of how to manage our systems more than, "It's just the way that we've managed it for the past 30 years, that's how we do this. At noon, we turn this pump on and we do this." Let's look at the dynamics of our very large system and utilize the data that we have to optimize how we do that.
Mahesh: Right. Now you can do it more than a decade ago because of the advancements of computing and the cost for chips. I want to talk about AI. There's been a lot of discussions on AI, and I categorize AI into three areas. Algorithmic AI, which is a lot of what you talked about. Hey, what should I optimize? Generative AI, which is mimicking the brain because that's the LLamA and ChatGPTs. Then autonomous AI, these are robots that are crawling around, walking around, doing the work, stuff like that. We are almost getting the algorithmic part, but generative and autonomous are much more advanced. What's your stance on this? Where do you see how it can help utility?
Troy: Yes, obviously with that data analysis of AI learning of how we operate our systems and how when we turn pumps on or we release pressure-reducing valves or we put water in the system this way, this is what our system does, to have a machine to be able to learn that, to optimize, to give that operator hues or other things. I think with a lot of these things with respect to the water and wastewater industry, it's really going to be informing that human operator. I think it's potentially something to be very cautious of of just having a computer analyze the data and then put out a product that basically we rely on our health and safety of our communities on.
To be able to feed that to a human operator, they can take that data and to put our logic on it to be able to make sure that everything's matching up and everything's making sense. It's really aiding and thinking faster and better and looking at more data to be able to synthesize that down for our operators to see. That's really going to be the key to help us move forward. I think that's the balance that you're going to have to have of doing that. It's not unlike-- I guess, as you go back into the 1970s and 1980s, we started to move towards mechanical actuators. You're no longer-- we're cranking valves open. You could then have a machine turn those on.
This is something that we're going to have to evaluate and do it in baby steps and where it's applicable that we can do it safely, that we can move that way and where we can't, where we really need that human interaction to be that last check of, "Yes, that makes sense, let's move forward," that's what we'll do.
Mahesh: No, 100% I agree with you. Especially no computer can sense all the dynamic conditions on the ground. They wouldn't know. There are the human elements that needs to be part of it. Now, as we start to wrap up this discussion here, you actually have good things to say. You cut down the unfilled jobs in your utility, but are there any talent gaps you have today that you really want to fill and what would that be?
Troy: Yes, I think as we look broadly, I think it's making sure the future generations are moving into energy or engineering and sciences. If it's really not that generation has a sector that's really not moving into the colleges, maybe exposing to them that there's really great things that they can do for their community and their environment by moving into the water and wastewater industries, whether that's on a mechanical basis or the analytical basis of being plant operators and things like that. I think that's really the talent gap is to make sure that we have those next generations filling behind it.
I think there was a lot of talk in the water and wastewater industry as that baby boomer generation retired and moved on that we were going to have all of these troubles and struggles, but I think we've done a really good job to be able to fill in that phase back in it, but it's to ensure that pipeline is continuing on. That's where we do a lot of education out in the elementary and high schools. A lot of that's focused on water conservation and those types of initiatives that we're doing to help on the demand side.
Other part of that is exposing that there's this industry out there of providing water and wastewater service that has this need of this generation that wants to clean up the environment and wants to do good things to help their community. It's really something that they could move into and really fill in those gaps. I think making sure that we have the chemists and the engineers and all of those sorts of things, but as well as the operators to make sure that those industries are filled in as well, because we've done a really good job over the past 100 years or so of being underground and out of sight and out of mind.
I think with drought and all those things, it's really transitioning us to have to come out and tell our story to make sure that everybody understands of "You just don't turn your tap on and water comes out." There's a lot of people and there's a lot of things that have to happen in order for that to happen.
Mahesh: Yes. After all, this is the technical work and you ingest this in your body. In a way that's super important. You can't have a non-doctor do a surgery on you. That's just not how it works, right?
Troy: Yes.
Mahesh: You cannot have a non-engineer run a plant or without designing it properly. Towards my last question, I know you have a lot of years left to do, but I don't know that, but I just assumed because you're fairly, relatively young, but what do you want to be known for, Troy? What is the imprint you want to leave behind?
Troy: Yes, I think in general, as I look back, there was eight water directors before me since 1950 or so. As you go back to most utilities, we were part of the public works department before that, but as we emerged out as our own department, it's really, I think, as I talked about them of really planning and putting things in place that I appreciate, whether that's infrastructure wise or water resource wise, that in my timeframe that I moved the ball forward on both of those issues of making sure that we were rehabilitating and replacing infrastructure in a well thought out and mindful manner, as well as not resting on the water resources that they had given me, but to go out and expand more and to push farther.
I guess the other thing that we've talked about it a couple of times is really that the city of Phoenix was bold enough to move forward of looking at taking wastewater and treating it to levels of beyond drinking water standards. The science and the technology are there, but willing to start to have those community discussions about the safety of all of those things is something that we should do. I'm really hoping that all of those initiatives, all three of those initiatives that's looked back upon, that we got those started and we completed them or wherever we end up at the end of the day to move us forward so that decades to come, they have the resources and the infrastructure in place that they'll be able to tackle whatever challenges that they're addressing at that time, which will probably be something, as well as infrastructure and water resources, but other things that you can't even imagine now.
Mahesh: Now, as I summarize this conversation, Troy, this is your generational stuff for you. Your father was in it. You are in it. You moved from engineering to operations up to 15 meetings a day. You're driving one water movement in city of Phoenix, just got approval to reconvert or reinitiate a treatment plant that was shut down, really focused on technology and how data mining can be used to aid and assist your operators and convincing your community that they can start to use wastewater as really a reuse of water for the drinking water. This is a lot of activity, and not to say that you manage over $500 million of OPEX, another $18 million for CAPEX.
This is an amazing, tough job. I do not envy being in your role, but I appreciate the complexity of your role and I hope the audience also understand how difficult it is of a job of you and your peers. With that, I want to thank you so much, Troy, for being part of this discussion and I look forward to connecting with you next time.
Troy: Thanks for having me.
Mahesh: Real pleasure.
Speaker 1: Join host and Aquasight founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani for another episode of 21st Century Water. Subscribe for free in Apple podcasts, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. Produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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