Laura Briefer is the director of Salt Lake City Public Utilities. Today she joins Mahesh Lunani of Aquasight to talk about her unique role in the water community as it relates to her appointment, droughts in the West, collaboration, and leadership.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Laura's job is appointed by the Mayor, and she's been in the role through three administrations. There are unique opportunities that come with that, as well as some challenges. She also explains her role on the Public Utilities Advisory Committee.
Briefer's department is 150 years old - she talks about the need to replace infrastructure, as well as the balance between using the institutional knowledge in her workforce and adjusting for future needs and challenges.
Climate change is a threat everywhere, but this is especially true in the Western United States, where they are already seeing the effects of drought, wildfire, and more. Laura talks about some of the unique challenges they face in Salt Lake City, but also how their residents have made a big difference in conservation efforts. And SLCPU is partnering with the University of Utah to study climate change and what strategies can be employed.
Finally, Mahesh and Laura talk about her strategies and tactics for ESG, guided by a member of her team who has a PhD in environmental equity projects and environmental justice projects.
More Information:
Laura's Bio: https://www.nacwa.org/about-us/board-of-directors/laura-briefer
Laura's co-written article The lost narrative: Ecosystem service narratives and the missing Wasatch watershed conservation story https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212041615300462
Salt Lake City Public Utilities Website: https://www.slc.gov/utilities/
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
Mahesh: Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm with Laura Briefer, director, Salt Lake City Public Utilities. It is the oldest water retail provider in the West, established in 1876. Laura has been appointed by the mayor to run the department, and she's deeply passionate about the impact of climate change on water, resources and watersheds.
Besides running the public utilities. She's also on the board of NACWA. Was appointed in 2017 on the Utah governor's executive water finance board, is on the board of the water research foundation and on the board of Utah lake water users, associations. Quite a few boards. She's an avid runner, used to teach meditation for kids, providing positive energy for the next generation.
Really look forward to talking to Laura and a diverse set of topics. Welcome.
Laura: Thank you Mahesh. It's great to be here.
Mahesh: A real pleasure. Look forward to it. So describe the Salt Lake City, public utilities in numbers. Like how big the service area, the population, et cetera.
Laura: Sure. So Salt Lake City Public Utilities is a city department.
So as you mentioned, I was appointed by the mayor and council and we work within that municipal structure. We provide water to all of Salt Lake City, which is close to 200,000 people. We also provide water outside of Salt Lake City's boundary to another 30,000 people. So in total, we have a service area that has an estimated population of 365,000 that we provide water.
And then we provide sewer and storm water services within Salt Lake City's boundaries. We have three water treatment plants, one sewer treatment plant, and a vast network of water, sewer, and storm water conveyance and distribution systems over about a 141 square mile area.
Mahesh: Excellent. So you would consider this to be a mid-size utility, right?
In a beautiful city like Salt Lake City watershed management is absolutely critical topic. Now your role is in an appointed position, as you mentioned. That's kind of a rare thing in the us for the most part, right? It does happen in several places. What are the pros and cons that come with such a structure and how are you navigating to deliver on the promise of your utilities mission?
Laura: Sure. The department directors for Salt Lake City have always been appointed so similar to the Parks director for Salt Lake City or the economic development director or the fire chief or the police chief. So I have a very great group of cohorts on the department level. And I'll say that being a department director for Salt Lake City is just a great, great experience. I have been appointed. Now I'm on my third mayor and lots of council members. The public utilities department is quite a technical department. And so the mayor and city council here in Salt Lake City, I think greatly appreciate the need to have someone very knowledgeable and very experienced running such a complicated department.
And so those are many of the pros. Sometimes the cons are, if we're in another election, I may not have a job or I'm at will. So for any reason whatsoever, I could be let go from my position. I don't really see that happening. It's a very good relationship with our elected officials here. And it feels very important to be part of that team.
Mahesh: Yeah. It's fascinating. You are the constant while the politicians are changing, right?
Laura: Yeah.
Mahesh: For water, wastewater, you need to have stability and sounds like you're bridging that gap. Very nice.
Laura: Well bridging the gap. I think along those lines though, I have other positions within my department. Some of that are appointed and some are not who lead different divisions.
And I also am very careful about selecting those leaders in my department too. So in the event that I'm not here, that there is a very strong team. We have a deep, strong bench of people who bring that consistency as well.
Mahesh: Yeah. I mean, in a time. What we call the last two years has been the great resignation.
The word "deep bench strength" is a very rare word to use these days. BUt hopefully when Salt Lake City is one of the most beautiful places to live in the country. So I would think the COVID has brought lot more people to your city that admire nature and resources. And maybe you have more opportunities in Salt Lake City.
I wanna talk about your department. It's 150 years. And not many water departments are that old. How's the culture of running a department that has century old practices?
Laura: Yes. That's a really great question. And the first thing I'll say is with our department being this old, one of the things that has really carried through is this legacy of environmental protection and this legacy of public service.
I would say with all of the employees that I talk to on a day to day basis, That is a culture that is very strong and very consistent here. And I really think that that goes to when this department was first established, it was established to protect the environment, to protect human health and to serve the public.
And it's just, it is very strong here. If you ever come here and talk to our employees, it is a very strong culture of those things. Of course we've had to change and adapt as things around us have changed. So sometimes it might take a little bit longer, but I feel that we have a very collaborative culture too.
And since I've become director six years ago, I feel like we've really been able to bring a lot of our different divisions together, very closely and collaborate on a lot of the issues that we're seeing now that we might not have seen before, whether there're changes in regulations, whether we are incorporating diversity, equity and inclusion principles, whether we have to do things differently because the city's processes changed. Like implementing new software for human resource management, for instance, So I think with an organization this old, I don't know if that takes more work than with younger organizations or not.
We also have a culture of people staying in the job for a long time. Routinely we have people retiring that have been here working for Salt Lake City Public Utilities for 40 years. So there is this culture of just sticking with the department, sticking with the mission. And oftentimes those long time employees that have retired still continue to reach out. Because they care so much.
Mahesh: Wow. You got collaboration, you got stability of employees and sounds like a great alumni that wants to be connected back to the department that they served. Now you have an advisory committee that includes Mayor Mendenhall and yourself. Yeah. Hopefully a guy that name correctly for the mayor.
Laura: You did. Yes.
Mahesh: Tell me how this committee functions and what is the measured output outta this committee?
Laura: Yes. So this committee is established by city ordinance and it is comprised of nine members from the community. So it's the true citizens committee. And the intention of this committee is to provide a citizen perspective.
So it's part of our public engagement. Their main role is to assist us in the development of policies, including our annual budgets and financing strategies, rate setting. And we have some smaller regulatory things that they do too, such as making decisions. A land use ordinance that affects the Riparian Corridor of the streams that pass through the city.
Each of our members are appointed for four year terms. So again, you have that consistency. It takes a while to onboard an advisory committee member. It's a lot to learn. And so having them there for four years and there, and. They can also be there for a second four your term, if the mayor and city council agreed to appoint them for a second term.
So sometimes we have members there for eight years. They bring a lot of really great wisdom from their communities and serve such an important function. The mayor and I are ex officio members. So we don't vote on the committee, but we help with agenda setting and try to bring out the things that are important to these committee members to talk about.
Mahesh: So tell me, when are you focusing your operational and capital investments in the next five years?
Laura: That's pretty easy. First of all, being such an old organization, we are focusing our capital investments on the repair and replacement of aging infrastructure in particular. The repair and replacement of our three drinking water treatment plants and the replacement of our sewer treatment plant.
Great news. We just received a FEMA Brick Grant for one of our water treatment plants for $37 million to fund 70% of the replacement of that. So, those are the big things on the capital investment side. With respect to operations, we are working a lot on emerging regulatory issues. We're working a lot on emerging regulatory issues including compliance with the new lead and copper requirements and on workforce.
So we're focusing a lot of operational investment in our workforce with a number of different efforts. And then just generally, resiliency. We are working on operational investments towards climate and drought resiliency here at Salt Lake City Public Utilities and in the state of Utah as a whole.
Mahesh: Well, excellent. First of all, congratulations on that $37 million check that you got from FEMA. Yes. I hope these investments really spur the rebuilding of the next generation infrastructure investments.
Laura: They are generational investments.
Mahesh: So let me go to the next question. What are your three biggest strategic challenges and how are you addressing them?
Laura: I would say our three biggest strategic challenges right now. First is climate change trying to address all of these different elements of climate change at the same time that we have a growing population. Also puts more stress on our water resources and environment. The second challenge that we are addressing is workforce and retention, recruitment, and diversity equity and inclusion in our workforce.
And then I would say with all of these challenges, The single most important way that we are addressing them is through a lot of planning. And that's planning for infrastructure. That's planning for updated rate structures and financial strategies. Planning for the next generation of our workforce and how we're accommodating a workforce that has changed a lot since the pandemic started.
And how we are planning for an increased population while our water supplies are being very challenged by climate and drought.
Mahesh: Yeah. I mean, without planning, you can't just solve big challenges. You have to put thought behind this.
Laura: It's true. And it's with planning too. It is so important that it's iterative, where we used to do water supply and demand planning for the next 50 years once every five to seven years.
Now we're doing that planning once every three years or even more frequent than that, depending on what we're observing in the environment. So I'll say another thing with respect to addressing these types of challenges. The planning is important, but maintaining a deep, on the ground, observational role is also important. So observing how our community reacts to these challenges, observing what's happening, in our natural systems, in our watersheds. We really need to make sure we are constantly gathering that data and incorporating them into a very iterative planning process.
Mahesh: Yeah, no, it's fascinating from a being a disciple of a management practices myself. Yeah, this observational role that you're doing on the ground and using that as a feedback loop for your iterative planning is not often talked about. So I'm really fascinated on how you are deploying this within Salt Lake City.
Let me move to the next part of the discussion I want to have with you, which is a role of technology. And the role of technology in water infrastructure, and what are you most excited and not excited about in this space?
Laura: So the role of technology and water infrastructure just seems everywhere. It's ever present.
It includes technology that allows us to assess our infrastructure's condition. Technology that helps us with being a more secure utility. Workforce management, constituent management, construction management. It's ubiquitous in our industry. And I'm excited about being able to harness the power of all of that technology.
I'll give you an example, as we are looking at repair and replacement of some really large projects, and we're talking about for a mid-size utility, $2 billion worth of infrastructure projects over the next few years, we are really honing in on a financial strategy. And on rate setting and a rate structure that is fair and equitable.
And that also we understand better what our community characteristics look like. We don't want to disproportionately burden different parts of our community. And one way that technology is helping us with that is for instance, taking all of the 2020 census data. And overlaying it onto our water service area, looking at income levels and proximity to environmental sites using that environmental justice screen through EPA, for instance.
I think the thing I'm excited about is that technology can be used to uncover things that we might not otherwise have been able to see, because we can put together lots of different streams of information and we can be a lot smarter about the decisions we make. I'll say the thing that sometimes makes me nervous about all the technology is being able to appropriately use it and have the bandwidth to use it. For instance, right now we have a lot of different software where we're trying to use together billing software, permitting, software, work orders, and just trying to constantly keep all of these different tools. Giving them the ability to communicate with each other in an effective manner sometimes can be a little bit messy and feel a little bit fragmented.
So I feel like that's a pretty small problem. And that's fixable. Especially when compared to all of the tremendous benefits that we see by using all of these technology tools and the way in which these technology tools are evolving is exciting to me. For instance, artificial intelligence and that's something I'm excited to explore more too. You and I have talked about that in the past as well.
Mahesh: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's so much to look forward to in this space. But as you said this fragmentation, and more importantly, how do you harness it? From my point of view? How do you harness all this technology to solve the problem that you have?
At the end of the day, that's what the true benefit is for the utility.
Laura: That's right.
Mahesh: So obviously you're from the Western part of the country and you never get away from a discussion without talking about drought and conservation and so on. And as I was preparing for this discussion, what was startling to me, your peak daily consumption in 2000 was 200 MGD give or take four or five MGD.
And your peak so far in 2022 was 120 MGD, almost a 35, 40% drop. It's a big revenue drop as far as, even though you might have a population growth of some sort, but it's a big revenue drop.. First of all, how do you get to that level of water usage efficiency? And then how do you cope with a big impact on your financials for that kind of drop in revenues?
Laura: So the strategy for conservation, we started in, in the year, 2000, really in earnest. And that was a development of a water conservation plan and a water shortage contingency plan. And the water conservation plan gets updated every few years, but really it's a compendium of different types of strategies that helps the public partner with us to conserve water.
And these are strategies related to residential water use and commercial institutional and industrial water use. And they range from regulatory strategies to all kinds of strategies that are voluntary, incentive based, and a lot of public engagement. And I would say the number one key to success for water conservation and for drought response is public engagement.
And having built up some community trust and community rapport is very important. And this year with respect to the drought, the drought response has been absolutely phenomenal. This year alone, we've saved two and a half billion gallons so far.
Mahesh: Oh wow.
Laura: In the water year. And the water year for Salt Lake City is April 1st to October 1st.
That's an amazing amount of saving. Close to a 20% savings when compared to the average of the last three years. And that's all our community doing primarily voluntary efforts. So that's great. There is the downside. Our revenue does not include property taxes. It is based on rates and revenue bonds.
And when we can get them. Grants like the $37 million grant, I mentioned earlier. But we don't depend on that. And so really when we see a revenue drop on an annual basis like this, the way we have to respond is to start prioritizing projects. That means that some capital outlay may not get expended. We may delay hiring new staff, or we may defer a capital project to another year.
I think in the long term, because I don't think these droughts are going away anytime soon. And our climate models do show that we will be facing longer and more intense droughts as things warm up. We're going to have to look at different pricing models for water. And that might be drought pricing when we're in a certain level of drought. It sometimes can be a little bit difficult though, to communicate that with the public, because they're doing a good job of conserving. They're doing what we're asking them to, and then we may be charging them more.
So there is a little bit of a conundrum in that problem. And I think a lot of Western water providers in our situation have that same issue at times. But I think the most important thing is that the public does really seem to understand and embrace conservation and an ethic around water and may even be willing to pay more in order to make sure that we take care of our systems the way we need to take care of them. And we're working a lot on public education around that as well.
Mahesh: Well, I think with great challenges come great innovations and I'm sure we will cross that bridge when it comes to drought pricing. I'm sure people, residents will understand, but you published a great paper on the impact of climate change on water supplies from central Wasatch mountains.
And how you're managing watersheds in Salt Lake City. What are the key findings of this article?
Laura: Yes. This was some research that we conducted in collaboration with the Western Water Assessment and the University of Utah. Since most of our water supplies emanate from the central Wasatch mountains, about 90% of our water supplies come from surface water in the central Wasatch. What we really wanted to do is see what happens when the temperature warms, what kind of models can we use to inform us in our future planning and with this study and looking at the last century worth of data, plus tree ring data and other metrics, and working with climate scientists as well.
What we found in this research is somewhat what we expected, but we were able to quantify it a little bit. And we found that we should be expecting earlier runoff as time goes by. Up to six weeks earlier, a very significant issue because that runoff needs to come at the right time to meet demand. And we don't have a lot of storage on our system, also less snow pack or maybe a conversion of precipitation from a snow pack based hydrology to more of a rain based hydrology.
All of that resulting in less volume of water available to us. And we calculated that for every degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, we could see between an eight and 15% decrease in water from the various watersheds. And that probably depends on their elevation. Lower elevation watersheds appear to not do as well as higher elevation watersheds, which is kind of intuitive as well.
And since then, that I believe that article was in about 2013. Since then we've done some additional climate vulnerability research. We entered into a five year contract with the University of Utah. And a multidisciplinary team there to look at various aspects of a changing climate on the hydrology and on snow pack and on temperature and demand to water demand increases as temperature increases potentially as well.
And so we are in our fifth year of partnership with the University of Utah, which has been great. We've had some great findings. There have been some additional published articles that have come out of that. And some more that are to come. Actually, you might be interested in this too. We also looked at models that would help us manage the infrastructure better through different types of technology and innovation as we are moving into this changing climate. So anyway, a lot of really exciting things that we're working on. In terms of trying to understand the impact of climate change on our water supplies and looking in that crystal ball.
And of course, all of that informs all of our planning.
Mahesh: Right, right. No, absolutely. And it's fascinating. It sounds like it is a very macro data driven forecasting analysis to see what the future lies or what the future holds.
Laura: That's right. Under different scenarios, one of the things that we've just found in this last round of studies with the University of Utah is that our precipitation might actually be correlated with Atlantic sea temperatures.
And that was not something that was on our radar in the past. And the significance of that is again, sort of being able to predict based on what's happening in this macro environment and looking at that data and trying to understand what that means for this next year of water supply. The next five years of water supply in the next 10 years.
So some really just very interesting information has been uncovered again by using data and technology, to try to uncover that.
Mahesh: Yeah, no, it's really fascinating. Fascinating. Now that you have this crystal ball of what the future scenarios could look like, what is your roadmap to driving your utilty to be resilient against this possible unfolding scenarios that you research have found?
Laura: Yes. And there are definitely some key pieces of resilience. There's probably more than this, but for me, five main elements to our roadmap. And those five elements to our resiliency roadmap in a time of climate change. Our first I've mentioned this before, but iterative water supply and demand planning that incorporates climate drought and infrastructure risks, and that's going 40 to 50 years, at least.
And we update that planning just every two to three years which includes projections of population growth and land use changes as well. So trying to make sure we include all of the different variables into that supply and demand planning. We also talked a little bit about another really big strategy and that's water demand and conservation management.
That's an ongoing strategy where we continue to update those plans and implementation strategies for conservation. Programming conservation pricing is another piece that we've already built into our water rates. But now we're looking at additional pricing such as drought pricing as well protection of our water supplies.
I mean, because drought and climate make us more vulnerable to water supply disruptions. We need to be able to protect the supplies that we have. And that includes protecting at a watershed scale. As I mentioned earlier, most of our water supply is surface water that emanates from the Wasatch mountains, that's national forest system lands, primarily the Wasatch cash national forest, and we work with.
The national forest, federal government, state, and local governments and others to really manage this 190 square mile area of watershed to make sure that the water supplies are protected at its source, including from wildfire risk, which we're seeing more with drought. And right now we are in the process of updating a new watershed management plan that takes a deep dive into fire vulnerability and emerging water quality issues that are projected due to a warming climate. And then the last strategy that's part of this roadmap is replacement and rehabilitation of our water infrastructure. That's something we're prioritizing too. Again, it's our water infrastructure sales. That adds just another risk to something that's already adding a risk to water supplies.
So those are very specific parts of the roadmap, but just going to the big picture, the big, long term strategy for us is enterprise resiliency as well, making sure that our organization and our community is resilient. That means that we are always looking at our continuity of operations, our workforce financial policies to reduce the risk of any one part of the enterprise being that weak link when we're facing such a profound challenge, such as climate change or drought. And I think that we've learned that that's really important over the last two years, reacting to a lot of concurrent challenges, such as drought and the pandemic. And we had a big earthquake and an inland hurricane and inflation. So I think just overall enterprise resiliency has to be the driving mantra behind your roadmap of resiliency during climate change.
Mahesh: Well, I mean, you have an impressive catalog of road roadmap items to address resiliency. And I just feel you're doing the 21st episode, Laura, and I haven't heard so many actions that any utility is doing together combined, in terms of driving resiliency and sounds like you're really taking this and especially being in the Western part of the country. It makes a lot more sense. Yeah. I wanna ask about ESG. That's a very hot topic at the moment. What are your strategies and tactics to make progress in this area?
Laura: Yeah, you're right. It is a hot topic right now. We just recently went out for a 2022 bond issue for over 300 million for some sewer and water projects. And in our bond rating interviews with Moodys and Standard and Poor, this was a thematic topic as part of those interviews.
Right now. I think our strategies and tactics for ESG build upon what we have been doing in many respects in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, in terms of looking out into our community and making sure that we're evaluating and with a goal to make sure water stays affordable and that we don't have environmental justice issues in our community.
Surrounding water and other issues and becoming part of our DNA. I think we've brought on some really great staff here. Some great leadership at public utilities at Salt Lake City Public Utilities, where this is really important to them. One of my deputy directors actually received her PhD on environmental equity projects and environmental justice projects.
With her leadership, we have developed an internal team comprised of line staff to prepare a diversity equity and inclusion plan for both internal for the workforce, but also external to the community. That has been a really interesting process for us because we're able to really rely on the firsthand knowledge of our workforce.
And at the same time, Create that idea as part of our organizational DNA, because it's coming from them.
Mahesh: Right. Right. I'm very intrigued by the fact that you hired somebody who actually did a PhD on this topic. So it's a perfect platform for her to execute on her research. I wanna switch topics, talk about leadership.
You've been a leader for some time now. What are the top three leadership lessons you have accumulated over the years? And what's your guidance to those who wanna be a leader in the water infrastructure business?
Laura: Well, I'd say my number one lesson is collaboration is crucially important when we are working on natural resource issues.
I say that because one organization can't possibly solve a problem or take an opportunity when the ecosystem of where these natural resources, where water comes from and where water goes is so multi-jurisdictional and so important. And so collaboration with other government partners within our organization, ourself, so that we don't have silos between, or we try to mitigate silos, I guess, between different parts of the organization.
Those are so important. Collaboration with elected officials, collaboration with the public. I've really stepped up the function of my organization with respect to public engagement because that collaboration, is so important. That is a really key leadership lesson. The second one we've touched on this a few times, but considering myself and my team as planners, we need to plan to anticipate and to implement.
And I think that's been something that has been very successful for us and a strategic planning too, where we start out with a water supply and demand plan, for instance, and that leads into a water conservation plan, which then leads into an affordability study, which then leads into a rate study for our rate structure.
So it's that taking multiple different types of planning and kind of putting them together. I really think planning is so key. And then the final lesson for me is to really deeply listen to my team and to the community. I didn't come into this job as an engineer, right? My background is environmental studies and public administration.
I have a team that has so much expertise in how to fix pipes and how to operate a sewer system and how to design treatment plants. And I've never been afraid to ask a question that I think might sound stupid . And I learned. I learned a lot from my team every day. And so listening to the team and incorporating what I learned from them and having that dialogue with them has been very important.
Mahesh: Just closing the loop on this. That sounds like it's very fascinating. As far as I'm concerned, it's listen, it's plan, it's collaborate. Yeah. Those are three big lessons. Now if there's one thing you want your legacy to be, what would that be?
Laura: Well, first I want to make sure that my legacy in this department's legacy is one of environmental protection and of inclusion. And so watershed protection and protecting Great Salt Lake. All of those things are so important. It's so connected to our community's overall health and prosperity. But inclusion, I think is just as important in so many ways. And so finding ways to understand where we can improve on that with our community ,and then act on that is something that I very much want to make sure that we are accomplishing. And this includes inclusion in our workforce as well. And diversifying our workforce to make it stronger and more resilient too.
Mahesh: Sounds like you wanna be. Known as a custodian of the watershed in your community.
Laura: Yeah. A steward, a steward of my watershed and my community.
Mahesh: Exactly. And taking care of it and passing onto the next leader.
Laura: Yes. Right.
Mahesh: Laura, it's been a fascinating conversation being appointed by a mayor and pass the chasm with three different mayors. You're big into collaboration, planning.
Observational role. More iterative planning, take care of the watersheds. Deep research on the impact the climate change has on the watersheds and the massive investments you are making. It just seems like there's no boring day in your job. And I totally enjoyed it. I learned quite a bit about the water leadership and I wanna thank you for being part of this show.
Laura: Thank you so much. And you're right. There is no boring day. Actually, if I could have a boring day, just one day that might be okay.
Mahesh: And you'd be running on that day.
Laura: We'd be hiking. Yeah,.
Mahesh: It's a real pleasure talking to you, Laura.
Laura: Yes, you too. Mahesh.