Juan Carlos Guerrero, Public Utilities Director at the City of San Diego, shares his journey from starting as a wastewater treatment plant operator to becoming a utility CEO. He discusses the pivotal moments in his career and the challenges and opportunities in the water industry. Juan also talks about the size and scope of the City of San Diego's public utilities, including its water and wastewater systems. He highlights the importance of optimizing operations and managing assets, and discusses the utility's plans for the future, including investments in infrastructure and technology. The utility is investing in infrastructure, including the Pure Water program, dam replacements, and customer service systems. Juan also addresses the talent gap in the industry and the need for workforce development. He emphasizes the importance of addressing climate change and shares the utility's efforts in water conservation and the development of local water supplies. Juan also discusses the role of technology, including AI and automation, in improving operations and customer service. He concludes by sharing his vision for his legacy as a leader in the water industry.
More:
Metro Wastewater (San Diego) JPA Website: https://www.metrojpa.org/
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
Intro: Tremendous challenges and opportunities exist right now for our nation's water infrastructure. In this 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: Well, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. I am with Juan Carlos Guerreiro, Public Utilities Director at the City of San Diego. In his current role, Juan oversees over 1,900 employees and runs a public utility business that provides water services for 1.4 million residents and wastewater services for 2.4 million residents. Juan actually has a very interesting background. He started as a wastewater treatment plant operator with stints through various organizations, and has achieved the highest level you can in utility, which is to be a director or a CEO. Juan graduated from San Diego State University and the University of Oxford in water science, policy and management. I really look forward to learning more on how Juan shaped his career and is shaping City of San Diego's public utilities. Welcome, Juan.
Juan Carlos Guerreiro: Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me, Mahesh. Great to be here.
Mahesh: A real pleasure. I want to get right into it because when I was researching in preparation for this podcast and looked at your career where you started as a wastewater treatment plant operator, and now you're a utility CEO, what were the three biggest turning points in your journey to get to where you are?
Juan: Well, great question, Mahesh. I know it is an unusual path that I took, and it's been very exciting, and I feel very blessed for the path that I've been provided. Three most pivotal points in my career. I'd say the first one was as an operator. When I first started in the industry, I was really at a point in my life where I was looking for a job, and I was looking for an organization that would be able to work with me while I attended college and figured out what I really wanted to do.
My original intent was to get a master's degree in business administration or financial engineering, something to do with finance. That was my original intent, but once I stepped foot on a wastewater treatment plant the first day, and I walked through the process, and I saw the lack of clarity in the wastewater and the sewage and how dirty it was, and then seeing the end of the treatment process, and the secondary effluent, how clean and clear it was, I thought that was a very pivotal moment in my journey because it hit me really quickly, the potential of wastewater treatment and the potential for recycled water.
The agency I worked for, we had four different satellite facilities. Some of them were recycled water facilities that produced Title 22 irrigation water for a few different communities in the Rancho Santa Fe area. It really blew me away.
I thought, "God, there is so much potential here." Then I started to learn that there is a lot of untapped potential out there. Not all the wastewater that is out there is being recycled. That really jumped out at me as, "Wow, this industry really has a lot of potential." That was pivotal point number-- turning point number one.
Turning point number two, I feel like happened when I was working my way through college as an operator. I had graduated from, or I was getting ready to graduate from San Diego State University, and I was considering graduate school paths. I remember reaching out to one of my professors who was an environmental economist. Because she had an economics background and an environmental background, I thought it'd be good to ask her, "Look, throughout this time I've been considering an MBA or something similar, but I really, really, really love the water industry that I've been in, and I'm trying to determine what path to take."
Her advice to me was, "Take the path that you're most passionate about. You can learn the fundamental business core practices through work. If you join an organization, they will train you. They will teach you those different mechanisms. If you have a subject that just really speaks to you and something that you really, really enjoy, you'll enjoy your graduate school experience that much more. That was pivotal too because I wasn't deciding to go down the finance path anymore.
I developed my relationship with the water industry as an operator and seeing the potential. At this point, when I reached that fork in the road and decided to go all in on water, it was like putting a ring on the finger of the industry. I was fully committed to this relationship with this industry. Fortunately, I was looking at a lot of different graduate school programs within the US and a few internationally, and I got accepted by the University of Oxford.
I think I was probably accepted-- Yes, you got to have good grades, but also having the practical experience in the industry is really helpful. Going through graduate school, there were so many sharp people there. I definitely wasn't the sharpest, but what I brought to the table was this experience within the industry. I felt like it was really great to go all in and bring the experience that I had gained over time, and then to really look at water internationally and think very broadly.
That was a huge turning point. I'd say the last turning point was joining the City of San Diego seven and a half years ago. I was overseeing 12 operators for Veolia at the International Wastewater Treatment Plant in South San Diego, and I took a huge leap into being the chief plant operator over these four wastewater treatment facilities. It's the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant and three satellite facilities. It's a huge regional system. I was overseeing about 250 employees all of a sudden. It was a massive jump. I was scared, worried, but I knew this was a growth opportunity, so I jumped on it.
Since joining the City of San Diego, my comfort zone is wastewater treatment plant operations, and it always will be. It's like your neighborhood where you grew up, right? I will always feel comfortable and at home at a wastewater treatment plant. I really found my place overseeing the wastewater treatment and disposal division within the City of San Diego. At one point, I was approached to potentially take a promotional opportunity to oversee the water construction and maintenance team and the wastewater collections team, which is in the same industry but definitely not the subject matter that I was very comfortable with. When I was given that opportunity, I thought about it, but then I took it.
Again, it was a growth opportunity that was a little frightening at the time, but that ability to get out of your comfort zone and start relying on your team members and learn new things and new subjects that you're not the most familiar with gave me a skill set that I think helped me get to the position where I am today, which is not needing to know all the details all the time. It's understanding very broadly where the gaps are and how to fill them.
I'd say those were the three big turning points in my career. Coming in, falling in love with the industry, really committing to the industry in graduate school, and then being open to totally new challenges and fortunately, it's at the right place at the right time, and I'm where I am today.
Mahesh: No, excellent. The last point you mentioned, that is a hallmark of a leadership because the leaders are not subject matter experts, but they are great in understanding the direction that they want to take the utility to or solve the problems. It sounds like you jumped from being a wastewater specialist to actually a water leader right there in that third pivotal moment you talked about.
Juan: That's right, yes.
Mahesh: I want to talk about it. Now that where you are in the San Diego Public Utilities, can you give a quick facts sheet on the size and the customers and the assets and the budgets? How big is the utility?
Juan: The utility is a great size. You mentioned it in the opening remarks. We have 1,900 employees roughly, give or take a few. On the drinking water side of our department, we serve about 1.4 million drinking water customers, but then we also manage a wastewater system that's more of a regional system. We serve the City of San Diego residents, but also those within the other areas. That's a total of 2.4 million customers on the wastewater side.
It's a very, very big system on both the water side individually and the wastewater side individually. In totality, it's a lot of water moving throughout the region that we're overseeing. Over the drinking water system, we have nine reservoirs that include dams, so that's a heavy lift on its own. We have 3 drinking water treatment plants, about 49 pump stations, and over 3,300 miles of drinking water pipelines. On top of that, we have about 104 miles of recycled water pipelines that our team manages.
It's a big, big water system in its own. Then on the wastewater side, we have another 3,000 miles of pipelines within our wastewater system that expands over 450 square miles. We cover a lot of ground, and with that comes a lot of miles of pipeline. We also have about 82 pump stations on the wastewater side. That's quite a lift on its own. Then we have three wastewater treatment plants. Again, the primary treatment plant is the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, but then we also have the North City and South Bay Water Rec Plant, and then we have the Metro Biosolids Center and two ocean outfalls.
On the drinking water side, we produce roughly 160 million gallons of drinking water per day. Some of that is lost in irrigation and other uses. On the wastewater side, even though we serve more than just the City of San Diego residents, we also treat 160 million gallons of wastewater per day. That's just a coincidence that they equal each other, but that's a sense for things on the technical side.
Mahesh: It's a huge asset base that you are managing. Given your interest in finance when you're actually going for graduate school, this is a huge amount of assets with a huge replacement value and you got to manage these assets. Now, really, for me, as I am deep operational person, have a passion towards it, given the background you have in operations maintenance and your appreciation for optimization, what would you do to transform the O&M business, the way we do it today? What would that be?
Juan: That's a great question. What I can do is speak to my experience here at the city and what I've seen here at this level. At a wastewater treatment plan, operations optimization is about process control and being diligent and dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's and making sure everything is good. At this higher more broad level, what I see is a host of different challenges.
For the City of San Diego specifically, construction is underway for Phase 1 of Pure Water, where construction is about 30% complete. That takes oversight. We have our dams, our nine dams. The average age of our dams is over 90 years old. Some of them are over 100 years old. Some of them need to be completely replaced. That's a huge lift. We have pump stations that are major pump stations on the water and wastewater side of the regional system that need to be either modernized, some of them are going to need to be replaced.
We have pipelines. We have a very robust pipeline replacement program that's been underway for years, so that's going very well, but again, that requires a lot of management as well. Then we also have, on the customer side, our customer service. Some of our technology is old and aging and we need to invest in new technology, which is something that we're looking at.
Myself as a process optimization person that's now overseeing this big organization with all these needs, to me, it's important to get a lay of land, to really look at everything in totality. Our department was consolidated. We were actually two separate departments over 10, 20 years ago that were consolidated under one department. The benefits of that was there's efficiencies to be gained and consolidating, but then we're also able to leverage that to push forward with Pure Water.
When you're overseeing the water and wastewater world, you're able to see the differences and make it work to move forward with Pure Water, but one of the challenges that happened was the two different systems weren't fully integrated. There was a big focus on Pure Water, but there wasn't a focus on the nuts and bolts and how the central services support both the water and wastewater side.
With all of these things, we're starting at the highest level. We're developing various plans. We have an integrated master plan that's underway to help us manage our assets right away, but we're also doing a benchmarking study to look at all the different utility management frameworks that are out in the market. There's EUM, Effective Utility Management, and there might be others. There's the ISO 14,001. I forget the exact numbers.
Mahesh: Yes, 14,001.
Juan: There's the ISO program that we oversee. There's APWA certification that we're looking at also. In order to standardize our operations across both the water and wastewater side and really get things organized, as this organization, we need to get organized, we need to start at the highest level. We have a consultant who's helping us look at all the different utility management programs that are out there.
Once we identify the one that is the best fit for a water and wastewater utility, not just water, not just wastewater, not overall public works, something that's specific to our industry that works, then we'll adopt that program, work through the process, do the strap plan, look at where the gaps are, and prioritize which ones need to be filled first and work our way through. To me, process optimization and operations optimization, you need to not start chasing different rabbits down different holes or else you're going to end up all over the place and spread thin. You need to start at the highest level and work your way through, and then it's a matter of prioritizing from there.
Mahesh: I was saying that you are on a path and a mission to benchmark yourself and then pick a framework that you want to move the needle along all the dimensions that makes you the best in class.
Juan: That's right. Exactly.
Mahesh: It's a great mission to have. Actually, that orients and aligns the whole water, wastewater side of the-- your Biosolids side of the organization to march towards the same mission, right?
Juan: That's right. Yes.
Mahesh: Now, as I was preparing for this, JPA is hugely critical for your organization because on your wastewater side, you've got multiple cities that are utilizing a regional system that you put in place. There are always room for improvement in JPA. The question I have is, how is this structured, how does the operation work today, and is there any improvement in the way things are going? Because, as a leader, you are always looking for improvements.
Juan: That's right. We have a really interesting governance structure here at the city. Obviously, within the city, we're governed by the city council and a strong mayor form of government. The city council really sets the policies for the city as an organization. We have a big regional wastewater system that we manage. Obviously, the water system too, but the Metropolitan Joint Powers Authority, the Metro JPA, isn't actually an organization within the city or a JPA within the city. They're a JPA that was set up by other regional agencies.
We have an agreement, the City of San Diego has an agreement with the Metro JPA where we provide wastewater treatment and disposal and reuse services for them. We have regular meetings with them where we talk about all the different work that's needed. They pay into our wastewater treatment system about 30% of what our costs are, and the city covers the other roughly 70%. With that, they have a financial stake in the game. They want to have a say in how we're managing our assets and managing our operations so we're efficient. Their 30% is a reasonable 30%.
One of the big things that we've been working with them on is just transparency and openness and open dialogue. When we talk to them where we're not trying to hide the ball, we're just being upfront and honest about everything that we do. On that end, it's worked really well because then they're able to be open with us, and we're able to solve problems for the region. This isn't about anybody versus anybody. It's not a basketball game or a competition.
We're all on this journey together to provide the best service we can for the community. It's really working together and collaborating as much as possible. That's one thing that we've been really effective at over the past few years. One of the areas that we want to continue to look at is sharing information and sharing data between systems. It's not just our system that operates unilaterally. Our system collects wastewater from their systems as well.
If they have I&I, then that impacts our system. If we have I&I on our end, that impacts their 30%. We have this shared responsibility. Both sides would absolutely benefit from additional collaboration, additional data sharing, and continuing that progress that we've made.
Mahesh: You bring up a really good point about, even though you're regional, you are taking their wastewater, but real relationship gets built through data sharing, not just wastewater sharing, but data sharing. That's key for transparency, collaboration. I've seen that. I've worked with a county with a million residents, and the data sharing goes a long way in driving collaboration between a regional entity and a local entity.
Juan: Absolutely. Then you're going off with the same facts. We're on the same page.
Mahesh: Exactly. Early on you talked about what are you trying to optimize in terms of the dams, the pump stations, the Pure Water system. There's a lot of checks you're going to cut next five years. What are your biggest investments in the next five years?
Juan: We have some major investments that we're currently undergoing and that we have coming our way. Just to get a sense for our financial size, on the water side, direct payments from our customers are at about $600 million a year and direct payments from our wastewater customers is about $400 million per year. Direct payments from customers is about a billion. Then we have debt service and other revenue streams that bring us up to a total of $1.7 billion. A billion on the water side, $700 million on the wastewater side, $1.7 billion.
I'm saying this for scale. Right now, we're undergoing the Pure Water Program's Phase 1. We're about 30% complete. That Phase 1 project is estimated about $1.4 billion on its own. Thankfully, we've been able to secure some serious loans from the federal government and from the state. Low-interest loans that are some are under 2%, some are under 1%. That really smooths out the impact to our rate payers. That's a massive investment. Then on top of that, we also have Pure Water Phase 2 that's being planned now.
Based on current projections, we're expecting a project bigger than this project to be completed by 2035. Again, high-level planning still underway, so those numbers could change, but they are significant investments. On top of Pure Water, we have these dams that I mentioned earlier, that some of them are over 100 years old, and our average age is 92 years. For context, the national average of dams, the age is about 57 years. We have a very aged dam portfolio.
One of our dams, Hodges Dam, actually needs to be completely replaced. The initial estimates are $270 million, $280 million. Those are very high-level estimates. Could be more than that. Fortunately, there are some low-interest loan programs that the Army Corps of Engineers have put together that we're going to be looking at that will help with that. Again, that's a big lift. In 2016, we did a really high-level assessment of all of our dams and that consultant got a sense for what our needs are going to be over the next few decades.
The number they came back with is about $1 billion. We have these multi-billion dollar programs underway on the Pure Water Program, but then we have this other $1billion program heading our way with our dam portfolio. There is a lot of work to be done, big dollar amounts. Then on top of that, we have investments in our customer service systems, whether it's a new call center, a new web portal or a customer portal, or AMI. These are all things that we're working towards, and we are investing in over the next few years. We have quite a bit going on, and it's all exciting.
Mahesh: It is. If you were a Fortune 500 or a Fortune 1000 companies making $3 billion, $5 billion investment, you'd be on Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, you are a public utility, and it's less interest to business side, but it is massive. What we're talking about is quite significant big dollars. Certainly, it requires leadership on how to deploy this efficiently, this capital, which is public money. Now, no utility is without any pain points. Pain points are natural, whether it's wastewater, water loss, I&I, workforce efficiency or lack of workforce, energy management.
What are your biggest pain points? Besides these investments and this major refurbishment of your infrastructure you got to do, what are your biggest pain points today?
Juan: Workforce is definitely one of them. That's a key thing that the entire industry is looking at. As our infrastructure continues to age and as climate change continues to make water and the flow of water, through the hydrologic cycle, a lot harder to predict, we're going to need people to help us build these new projects and develop these new projects and run the new projects after they're built.
The amount of people that we're going to need to push through this next era of water infrastructure investment, we need to really get in front of and start to develop. We're working on that for sure. On top of that, one of the biggest pain points for us, especially in the San Diego region, is we've made a lot of investments. The Pure Water Program is already a third complete. The San Diego County Water Authority work to build the Carlsbad Desal facility. We've worked on being in an arid region.
We have historically worked on local projects. We have the City of Oceanside and the East County JPA are both developing their own advanced water treatment project. City of Oceanside is already up and running. We're putting in all these investments. That's a lot of money. That pushes against affordability of water rates. We have our water rate hearing coming next Tuesday. It's a very tough thing to move forward with. It's great because water generally is comparatively cheap compared to bottled water and other commodities.
The prices are going up and going up in a way that it has a significant impact on households, especially low-income households. We're really trying to engage through the associations and agencies that we're a part of and through our government affairs team to lobby at both the state and federal level for a low-income assistance program to help families in need with their utilities.
People talk about a human right to water, and it's vital for life. It's such a critical resource, but there's no low-income assistance program that's set up. There are for other utilities, but not for water. That's one of the challenges. Utilities need to be financially prudent. We need a certain level of revenue. Prop 218 in the state of California make sure of that. We can't subsidize across customer classes. We're going to need a state or federal assistance program to really help with that and build a base.
Affordability, workforce development, those are our biggest pain points. We have a roadmap for the projects to happen and know what we have to do. It's really making sure we have the support to do those things.
Mahesh: No, the rates you brought up is really interesting because the water is cheaper than cable on a monthly basis. Water is as important as it is for us as humans. We need that for day-to-day lives, but it's cheaper than the cable. Cable costs today $50, $70 a month. Water is way less than that now. Climate change, especially given where you are in San Diego, Oceanside, you got crazy hot weather conditions and drought conditions and other things.
What actions are you taking besides pure? Of course, pure is such core to what you're doing in terms of circular economy and recycling water. What other actions are you taking to tackle climate change?
Juan: Pure water really is the biggest focus. I know we talk about Pure Water quite a bit, but it's a big, significant lift. It's the biggest infrastructure project ever undertaken by the City of San Diego in its history. It's a big lift, not just for the Public Utilities Department and the water and sewer funds, but it's a big lift for the City of San Diego in general. It's really pushing for that.
We saw recently in the southwest, Nevada, Arizona and California, we've experienced megadroughts now, not just droughts, they're megadroughts, and not just storms, but atmospheric rivers. Then we had all of a sudden Hurricane Hillary, which thankfully wasn't as significant as we planned for, but we're seeing these challenges. With the last megadrought, the Colorado River was pushed really hard. When you see these impacts, people say, "Carbon is the mitigation story. Water is the adaptation story."
We couldn't emphasize more the necessity of thinking outside the box and developing these new local supplies. Yes, we are doing other things to combat climate change, but really Pure Water, I can't express the significance of developing these new local drought-proof supplies of water. I will say though, in addition to Pure Water, conservation is a way of life in Southern California, in particular, specifically the City of San Diego. I'll speak for the city.
We have permanent drought restrictions that are in place. They've been in place for a while. We continue to encourage our residents to conserve as much as possible. It's a vital resource. As we continue to develop more and more reliable local water supplies, we still have to be mindful of how much we use because the amount of water we produce takes a certain amount of energy.
We know that energy is a driver of climate change. Eventually, hopefully we will be 100% renewable at some point as a nation, as a planet. Being really mindful of the amount of energy we use, which really stems to the amount of water we use. Just before we jump on this point, I did want to plug that the city does have a climate action plan. It's not specific to the Public Utilities Department, but it focuses on energy usage within the city's buildings and the emissions of our fleet, which is pretty significant. There's a lot of things going, but Pure Water and water conservation is really the big push.
Mahesh: Excellent. I want to switch the topic from climate change to technology because we can't ignore technology these days. We're surrounded by it in the last 25 years. What are you most excited about, and can you describe the innovations you would like to deploy?
Juan: You're going to get tired of hearing about Pure Water all the time, but I am most excited about Pure Water. There are other things too, I promise, but the advanced water treatment technology is going back to when I was an operator and seeing the benefits of wastewater treatment and not knowing how far water recycling could go, to learn more about the advanced water treatment technologies and the real workhorse reverse osmosis and understanding the membranes.
One of our vendors is Toray, and they produce the actual membrane fibers and everything and the membrane sheets. It blows me away just to think that these pore sizes 0.001 microns, and to explain to people that if you took a human hair and divided it by 500,000 times, that's how small these holes are, and water can only get through it. That's mind-blowing. It's such a game changer.
We know that reverse osmosis has been around for a long time, but to see it deployed at this scale over and over is extremely exciting. On top of that, we look forward to smart meters. These aren't necessarily innovative, they're becoming more of an industry standard, but it's a technological advancement for the City of San Diego. There was an initial deployment a few years ago that didn't go very well because the department didn't really have a plan in place.
We're working with a consultant to develop a deployment plan. A consultant has a ton of experience throughout the nation deploying AMI. We're really looking forward to that being deployed successfully this time around. Then I mentioned it earlier also, we're investing more in our customer service technologies. We got to get out of some of these older legacy software systems. One of the things we're looking at, in fact, on the 27th of this month, we're going to be going live with a new call center software from Amazon Connect.
That'll be a big improvement for the team and our customers. Then also we're developing a web portal, and we have Deloitte and Salesforce helping us with that. That'll be a user interface for both customers initially, and then eventually our customer service representatives, to make our operations a lot more efficient and effective. We're getting a lot of support from our internal departments; our performance and analytics department and department of information technology.
It's all hands on deck to try to make our operations more effective and efficient. Then on top of that, we're always looking at our control systems. On the wastewater side, we deployed Emerson's distributed control system, which is a great kind of Cadillac or even Ferrari, if you will, of control system technologies. We're looking at the potential of investing in the same on our water side and looking at what that could look like. There's a lot of different avenues.
Then to some of our conversations we've had in the past, also with all this data and all this information coming from all these different angles, how do you consolidate it, where do you bring it together? With EUM, do you develop a management dashboard that brings all these things together to help you understand how efficient your operations are? We have things in motion, we have things in sight that we will be looking at more down the road, but those are some of the key things that we're really focused on at the moment.
Mahesh: It's fascinating and a lot going on. Someday I do want to understand how do you keep all of these clear in your mind. Not for the audience today, for sure, but just one more question on technology. There's a lot of talk about AI. You just talked about there's just too much data we're generating. Where do you see the application areas?
Juan: From my operations background, I obviously look at operations technology, and I like the idea of AI providing information to support operators in their decision-making. I think there's a lot of fear that AI might take over the workforce. I don't think that's sound decision-making from a management standpoint. I think AI will help operators with decision-making where it can output some numbers that give an operator a sense that I'm moving in the right direction, or maybe I'm not.
I always think that an operator is going to be needed for quality control to make sure whatever information the AI is putting out makes good sense. Sometimes you need eyes on the process, eyes on the treatment process, your ear to hear the equipment to hear things. You need to be able to smell the treatment process. You can really pick up on these things that maybe at some point a computer might be able to. Things might be heading in that direction.
I always think the human interface is going to be massive. That's one area. Another area is with administrative tasks. We're looking at customer service. Are there things that ChatGPT can help us with with answering customer inquiries that are a little more FAQ of sorts, run-of-the-mill things to keep people from picking up the phone and calling the call center to make our call center more efficient? Could be used for HR documents or legal documents, some of the things that are more standardized.
I still believe, call me old school, I still believe that humans will need to be there to make sure that everything looks good, check the box. I do feel that it'll make our jobs more effective and efficient, maybe reduce stress levels a little bit because people are so busy trying to get things done, and improve the quality of life. Those are some thoughts, and we'll see where things go.
Mahesh: No, fascinating to look forward to how this will evolve in the future. Now, you talked about talent in one of your earlier questions. Where is exactly the talent gap you have today and how you plan on filling it?
Juan: We have a talent gap in a lot of different areas, and we have very talented people, but we also have vacancies that we're working to fill. We have a lot of people who've been retiring over the past few years and filling those positions. We're somewhat running out of experienced people who've been in the industry for a long time, and we're tapping more into trainees, which is exciting. That's where I started, and that's where we all started.
We all started at the most basic level, but it's making sure the number of trainees we have doesn't overwhelm the trainers, who also have a full-time job to carry out. That's one of the big challenges we have across the board. Specifically, one of the classifications that we talk about quite a bit in our organization is instrumentation and control technicians.
It's currently a challenge because there are very few and far in between, salaries are starting to increase for those skill sets, which is harder-- it's harder for municipalities to be as agile to move salaries up to compete that quickly where a private firm can increase it in the middle of recruitment. Public agencies can't move that quickly. That's a really hard one to keep up with. We are working on increases, and we are implementing them, but it's a timing challenge that we're continuing to work on. That's our current status quo.
As these new facilities are built, automation is going to increase more and more, whether it's deploying AI or just what we have now, which is automated sensors, analyzers, controls to manage the process through the DCS or SCADA, there's going to be more and more automation. Modernizing our pump stations is going to probably mean more controls. Really looking to develop that workforce is going to be key.
We're looking to get out as an industry to engage with the labor community to talk more about the water industry and what an amazing career path it can be. Whether you want to work white collar or blue collar, there's something for everybody here. We're really working on that.
Mahesh: You're a perfect example. You didn't know this industry, you just wanted to join, and you got sucked into it-
Juan: That's right.
Mahesh: -because of the potential it had. In fact, it was funny because when you gave the reason why you joined, and you saw the potential 20 years ago, there's potential for recycling, well, that's exactly what you're doing now with Pure Water fast forward. That two dots really gives the spectrum of why you joined in the first place and how realizing that vision now.
Juan: That's right.
Mahesh: I want to talk about this because this relates to a legacy question points to this. You got a lot of years left in you. At some point, I'm sure you think about legacy. What do you want to be known for?
Juan: I hope I have a lot of years left in me. That's the primary goal. Obviously, stay healthy, manage stress, and continue to stay focused on the long game. I really want to be known for, I guess I can speak where I am now and then go more broad after that, but I really want to be known for having an impact here at the City of San Diego. When I joined years ago, we were coming out of an era where there was an underinvestment in the-- we were coming out of the economic downturn. There was some political turmoil at the time.
We were coming out of an underinvestment in our human resources and our other non-human assets, our infrastructure. I'd really like to be known for getting this utility on the right track and having an integrated game plan for both the water and wastewater departments under this PUD umbrella, the Public Utilities Department umbrella. That's here at the city now, but what would I like to be known for throughout my career? I gave this a little thought, and I came up with an analogy that I'd like to share.
Some people cringe at my analogy, so I hope this one makes the cut. I'd like to be known as the Sherpa within the water industry. I say that because I want to be known for somebody who's there with the team as we're finding our path to the summit, to whatever goal we're going towards. I'm happy to carry load. I'm not one to delegate everything down to my team. I do know how to delegate effectively in a way. The Sherpa can't carry everything. Everybody's got to carry some weight, but I do want to be known as somebody who's willing to carry weight and help people get to their destination. Kind of the servant leader, but not just a servant. Somebody who actually-
Mahesh: That's right.
Juan: -knows the path to, hopefully-- I'm not a very innovative person. I'm not going to develop a new technology. I'm not going to develop a new chemical. I'm not going to develop these different things, but what I have found myself being able to do that helps is read the room. I mean that within the industries. Get a sense for where things are going, where we need to go as a team to stay on the right path and to really be helpful. I come from a position of being helpful, which comes to carrying the load, being willing to carry some load and all that stuff.
I really think that's part of the Sherpa mentality that I have. I'm also not a very boisterous or loud person. You're never going to hear me shout or yell. I'm not one of those driving forces that comes out and takes the troops by force and gets all these things done in that manner. My way of really getting my team moving in the right direction, helping them with their work, is engaging them, enabling them, and empowering them, and encouraging them.
We hire people for specific skill sets. Sometimes managers push them in a certain direction or might not do those things and engage them, and they're not really getting all of that person. They're regulating their valve a little too much. What I like to do is open it up. We hired you for a reason. We want all of you. We want you to engage so much that you develop the sense of agency, this sense of ownership where we're all on this path together. We're working on this goal together.
This is exciting. It's tough. It's hard. We need to rest every once in a while, but by the time we reach the summit, we can all be proud that we did this thing together. We spend a majority or a huge chunk of our lives at work. We leave our families in the morning to spend time at work. Most of us wouldn't really want to leave our families unless we really needed to.
We're here for all this time because we have to be, and we want to be proud of what we're doing. We might as well have a good time doing it. You might not hear me yell or scream, but you'll hear me laugh, and you'll hear my team laugh because we have a good time. We know what we're striving for. We're all working on it together. We're going to have good days, we're going to have bad days, but in the meantime, we're going to laugh through it, enjoy this thing, and hopefully at one point we'll reach that summit and celebrate.
Mahesh: Fascinating. Sherpa is both a load taker and a leader to get to the end top of the goal or to a summit. It's a great example. Juan, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I saw the passion. You joined this industry because you had passion. You are leading City of San Diego through the Pure Program, Pure Water Program, which is going to be a monumental milestone. Ready to spend billions of dollars in the next five years in a massive infrastructure upgrade.
Really looking to benchmark the best utility framework that gets you to the top of the house, investing in big technologies, and really want to be Sherpa. I couldn't put this whole picture together prior to this call, but just listening to you, I hope the audience really get what it takes to start as an operator, the lowest level, get your license to be the utility CEO. It takes Juan Carlos Guerrero to get there. I appreciate your time.
Juan: No, thank you, Mahesh. I always appreciate our conversations. Thanks for having me.
Outro: Join host and Aquasight founder and CEO, Mahesh Lunani, again next month for another episode of 21st Century Water. Subscribe for free in Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or Stitcher. Produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.