21st Century Water

Pinellas County Florida's Megan Ross on Her Unique Water Challenges

Episode Notes

Megan Ross is the Utilities Director of Pinellas County Florida, which includes Clearwater and St. Petersburg (near Tampa).  A chemical process engineer by trade, her background is different than other water professionals we've spoken to.   She entered this industry because she saw a need, and she wanted to stay close to home and serve her community.

Megan describes the unique governance structure her organization has, working with 14 municipalities as well as Tampa Bay Water.  

She calls her top 3 challenges "Workforce, workforce, and workforce," and has implemented plans to hire everyone from veterans to former prison inmates.   This enables her to find workers and be involved with various community organizations.  And some positions will need to be outsourced.

Megan talks about becoming more empathetic as a leader during COVID, and keeping her cool when others around her aren't.  And she has a healthy appreciation for the essential workers that work in water.

You may think that Florida has no shortage of water, but it is a challenge to find affordable fresh water for residents.  Ross explains why that is.   Also, climate change remains a major threat to all aspects of life, including the area's lifeblood, tourism.  Megan talks about what measures are being undertaken at the state level and with individual residents.

Ross talks about the differences between being a supervisor and a manager.  As a supervisor, you are managing people.  But as a manager, you need to manage the processes that help the managers manage.

Finally, we talk about women in STEM, and the pride our guest takes in hiring and mentoring other women.

Links:

Pinellas County Website: http://www.pinellascounty.org/

Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/

Episode Transcription

Mahesh: Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm with Megan Ross, utilities director at Pinellas County, Florida. She's a chemical engineer, completed her graduate certification in public administration, worked in private sector as a process engineer. And now in the public sector, leading a county utility, Meghan demonstrates that you don't have to be a civil engineer to be a water leader.

What you need is the right combination of technical problem solving strategic planning, workforce development, and performance management skill. This is our episode 18, and she is our first guest from the great state of Florida. So I'm really looking forward for an exciting discussion with Megan. Welcome Megan.

Megan: Well, thank you and really excited to be here. 

Mahesh: Real pleasure. Let's get right into it. Early in your career, you did a switch. You were a chemical process engineer at a number of private sector units, and then you moved from a process engineer to running capital projects in public sector, and you never looked back since then. What triggered that move?

Megan: So that's a great question. What initially triggered that move was simply built out of selfish reasons. I wanted to work locally and at the time the private sector, this was in 2013. We were still experiencing some market fluctuations. You know, businesses were still really struggling coming out of the economy.

It was quite uncertain at that time, particularly in Florida, in the Tampa bay area. And so I wanted more stability and I wanted to contribute locally to the community. I didn't know anything about government. I didn't know anything about local government. I had grown up in Pinellas county, my whole life for the most part.

And it was just out of selfish reason. So once I got into the industry and started learning about utilities and wastewater and infrastructure and local government, I stayed for the reasons that it offered me opportunities for leadership. And that combined with the fact that I saw just such a need for talent in this industry, that I wanted to contribute to that need.

And I wanted to recruit others to help because I just saw such a need in the realm of infrastructure, particularly in water and wastewater. You know, it just really, it really excited me as an engineer and both unlocked leadership potential that I had and have been looking for that the private sector did not offer.

And so that has what has caused me to stay. 

Mahesh: Well. That's a great story. So you really wanted to stay local, you saw a talent gap, and then you saw an opportunity to unleash the leader within you. And so that's what drove the stickiness in the sector as I see it. Great. So let me talk about your utility.

Can you describe the size and the economics of your utility and what is one thing that keeps you up at night in this role, in this job? 

Megan: Yeah. So just broadly, our utility, I would say it's a moderate sized utility. We're not large. We're not small. We're about 114,000 water accounts, 83,000 sewer accounts, and right around 21,000 reclaimed water accounts.

What makes it a little bit more complex is that we serve several communities, both their retail, water, and sewer operations and wholesale. So we have about 14 cities that we own and operate their water and or sewage infrastructure. And then we have also a handful of wholesale customers. And I would say what keeps me up at night?

Not a lot. I mean, I sleep pretty well. We have a really great team, but I will say though, what I think keeps us going is we're really catching up to a lot of needs that we have in our infrastructure. I mean, there was a number of years following the recession, that infrastructure was just not adequately invested into.

In terms of the water and the sewer system in particular. And so we're really catching up and meanwhile, trying to also be progressive and implement systems and programs that are more forward thinking to the future, such as advanced metering infrastructure and also a regional biosolids facility that is really needed.

There's just a lot of big projects and programs that we're embarking on now all at once. That is keeping us very busy, very interesting, but also very busy while at the same time trying to play catch up with, you know, some infrastructure that is quite frankly, is failing and that really needed an investment years ago.

So we're now trying to expedite those capital programs as much as we can. 

Mahesh: No, it's good that the challenges are letting you sleep nicely. Cause that's the best form of leadership is not to take it home. But that being said, the way you described your regional water utility and the fact that you supply and you run a number of small cities, 14 of those, that makes up for a challenging governance model, I would assume?

Because the representatives, so how does that work today and how are you organized internally? Because you're serving so many communities. To manage your $200 million revenue business? 

Megan: Yeah, sure. So we are a seven member commission that we report up to an elected body of Pinellas county, and it is a commission county administrator form of governance.

So we do have an appointed county administrator that is appointed by the board that all county departments roll up to, including ours as a department, we are divided by functional areas, such as maintenance, plant operations, customer services, et cetera. One of the things that I did a few years after getting this position is implement some organizational structure modifications.

We've hired a deputy. We have a deputy structure now that oversees our operational divisions. We also have an inter-governmental water manager that manages all of our relationships with those cities and with our wholesale partners, all of the inter-local agreement. And things that we need to keep up to date because it really is all about partnerships. And maintaining all of those partnerships is important. We also have a partnership with a regional water supplier, Tampa Bay Water, which actually supplies water to the entire region, including Hillsborough county, Pasco county, and various cities. So there's that partnership as well. But I think what's also helped us organizationally is the implementation of our strategic plan.

We really, I think move the ball forward. This is right in the middle of the pandemic. In 2020, we decided to release and implement a strategic plan, um, partially virtually, but it was needed because that's such a large department managing so many projects and programs. We just all needed to get on the same page and all needed to have direction.

You can see my mission, vision, values poster behind us. And I think that's really helped to communicate to all levels of the organization, what we're doing, why it's important and how it rolls up to that broader outcome to the community.

Mahesh: Right. I'm glad you brought up this topic of strategic plan. One of the fascinating things I've heard in episode 17, which is the one before this, I had Carla Reid.

She's a CEO of WSSC water, which runs for 1.8 million residents. And she said the single biggest way she's driving change in our organization is through the strategic plan. And I can tell the way you responded that strategic plan is essentially a critical tool for you given the fact that you did it during COVID, a critical tool for you to drive and communicate.

So, what is it that you learned while you deployed strategic plan that changed the way you manage? 

Megan: Well, the one thing that I learned is that the easy part is writing the strategic plan. And even that is challenging. It does take input from all levels of the organization, as well as external partners to identify strengths and weaknesses.

But the hardest part is implementation. You know, I think there's various research out there and articles that show that a lot of strategic plans fail on implementation because there isn't an organizational structure behind actually implementing what you're trying to do. It's really easy to have these high aspirational goals, but then when the rubber meets the road, how is it actually going to get done?

And who's tracking and monitoring performance and implementation to make it a reality? And so we focused a lot of time on the implementation model. Where we assign various goal champions that reported up to our deputy director and put a structure around the strategic plan implementation that I think was very effective, but it also required some change management.

People were, you know, a little bit hesitant about it. Why do we have to do this? I don't understand, you know, you're upsetting my apple cart type thing. But I do think now that it's been a couple years into it and we refresh it annually. I mean, we've put the time in to revisit it annually, to update it, to refresh it.

We also make sure that we connect it to the countywide goals. So there are county-wide strategic plan elements that address more of the broad, you know, county transportation, bicycle safety. I mean, it covers a whole wide range of things and we make sure that we connect. Those goals and initiatives into our plan every year to ensure that we're not only doing what we think is important, but we're doing what our board feels is important and what our administrator feels is important and what the public feels is important.

And we're making sure that those don't get lost in the mix of everything else that we have going on. 

Mahesh: Yeah. It's like an orchestra, right? So you've got to orchestrate down and manage it through KPIs and initiatives and change. And then you have to work through the rest of the peers as part of the broader county entity.

So it all kind of plugs in together. It's a hell of a challenge being a strategy consultant 15 years ago. I can tell you that you're absolutely right. It's easy to build it. It's much harder to implement it. And that is great practical leadership learning there. Now I wanna talk about, as a leader, it's always about challenges, right?

How you address the challenges? What are the top three challenges you're focused on and what kind of strategies you are deploying to meet those challenges? If you have to pin it down, what's your 1, 2, 3. Would that be? 

Megan: So I get this question a lot and my answer has to be my top three challenges are.

Workforce, workforce, and workforce. And I say that because yes, there are many challenges. There's cyber security. Now there's unfunded mandates, particularly in Florida that are not just federal mandates, but state mandates. There's a number of other challenges, but without people you can't do any of those other things.

So until we solve the problem of workforce, And really continue to focus on it because it's not going to be a one and done. We will not be able to do the other things. And so some of the things we're doing are, uh, looking at different strategies. I will tell you that we've implemented a jail to job program for some of our trainee maintenance workers that really don't require a lot of skilled training up front that really can, you know, dig the holes, repair the pipe. We can train people. We've connected with our actual Pinellas county jail, or advertising jobs in jail for people that are exiting. And we're also connecting with other nonprofits that do that type of work, because we also want to not only fill our positions, but we also want to improve some of the social aspects and correct some of the social issues that are going on there with those that are reentering the workforce and have a hard time getting a job.

We're now looking at veteran as a source to fill our skilled labor gap, but more from a skilled labor, leadership potential because there's a lot of veterans looking for jobs, but the training and the skills and the certifications they gain in the military do not translate to the civilian world.

And you'll see in local government, all these jobs posted with you need an XYZ certification, or you need this type of certification. And these things aren't necessarily hard to get. It's just, you got to give somebody a chance, you know. They may have something similar, but it doesn't translate. So taking a chance on people and kind of recognizing that being a little bit more open-minded to other skills that are translatable and not just being so narrowly focused on, you have to have utilities experience. I mean, I came into this utility. I didn't have utilities experience. Right. But I learned it very quickly. My experience was very translatable and in fact, some of the industries I worked in before were much more difficult than water treatment.

When you're talking about phosphoric and sulfuric acid and pulp and paper. Things that are just much more complex than dangerous, but we are also having to recognize that as a county government, we're not necessarily going to be able to hire a full-time positions in certain skills. When we look at cybersecurity, am I going to get a leading cybersecurity expert to work for Pinellas county government? Chances are like one in a million, unless they just really want to live near the beach and retire here or something.

So we've got to look at outsourcing and that's what I've really been driving my team. You know, when we're looking for specialized type positions to meet our needs, sometimes it may not be a new position, you know, sometimes it might be outsourced. It's a specialist, because you're not going to get that skill in house.

So just being realistic there, we also see that challenge with engineering right now, along with a lot of the funding that gets poured in through those infrastructure bills, through state funding that we're seeing, these are all great things getting poured into water and waste. But what it means is the private sector is snapping up a lot of our engineers.

So we can't compete with some of the offers, you know, the signing bonuses, et cetera. We just can't do that as a local government. So just being realistic about looking at other opportunities, program management services, outsourcing. And things like that. So that's our biggest challenge. And I would say there's many other challenges, but like I said, without people, we just can't get those other things done.

Mahesh: Yeah. I'll tell you what, there's so many points you said that resonates well with me But the two in particular, one is if not, for people, organizations work. But the fact that you have people and you have to find a way to make them all work together. So that's a big challenge and workforce, not just from a hiring and skill gap, point of view, but even the ones who get right, you know, you got to train them, coach them and so on.

And the second thing is, unfortunately, the county or city government is not in a position to match up with highly specialized talent. That's coded. So you can't hire data scientists or cybersecurity professionals. They're working for Amazon and Google, et cetera. So I think you want to tap into, and that creates a great partnership model and ecosystem that you depend on for these things.

But I can tell you that there's one thing I got infected with during COVID is empathy. Okay. Not COVID fortunately. It's always been negative tests. I changed. And the last two and a half years as the CEO of the company to be much more an empathetic CEO and I wasn't before, before I was running like a Silicon valley type.

And I think these, moments really evolve you. Yeah. So the question I have for you, how have you changed, due to COVID? How are you a different CEO? 

Megan: That's a good question. I definitely have heard a lot of what you just mentioned, the empathy. Becoming bigger in the spotlight in terms of leadership.

And I can't deny that that did occur when you talk to people that were struggling to watch their kids at home and schools were closed. I mean, there was literally people having nervous breakdowns. I mean, like to the point of like pushing them to the edge, right? And I felt so awful and, and really understood where they're coming from.

I have a daughter and she's a little bit older, so I was a little bit lucky in that regard, but I mean, I couldn't imagine what these people had gone through. So empathy was definitely a big growth factor for me as well. I think also strength, just there were moments of panic where I could sense that people were almost losing it.

Even some of our leadership folks. And so making sure that I presented regardless of what I felt or what was going on in the world, that I would present myself with a calm and kind of calm the room, no matter what was going on, you know, my hair's on fire. What do I do? You know, kind of just being that calm and saying, Hey, we need to really just logically work through this.

You know, and in a sense, it was kind of interesting because there was a lot of things that were totally not logical or rational, a lot of things that were going on, but just really focusing in on, Hey, we just need to keep doing what we're doing. Because the last thing that we wanted is for people to not show up to work.

And now we don't have clean water to provide people in sanitation, you know, sewer services, which is like the number one protector of public health, okay? I mean, if you want to talk about disease without a sewer system, you're going to have a lot of disease, okay? I'm going to be worried about COVID anymore.

So really communicating also to staff and employees, really staying engaged, even virtually and letting them know that that what they are doing, you know, they're not hospital workers, but they're equally as important as the hospital workers. They may not get that recognition from the news and other outlets, but they're getting that recognition from us internally as leaders that we really need to explain to people that what they're doing is so important to public health.

And I think the fact that we had started communicating that prior to the pandemic, because we recognize what we do every day is important to people and have been communicating that right along. So it wasn't a new thing to communicate, but it was just emphasizing that, hey, without us, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.

I mean, we have to show up to work for our community. That was just something else I learned is really, really staying calm and not getting into a panic mode and just working through the issues as they come.

Mahesh: Good. I mean, these crises involve us as individuals, for sure. Shifting from pandemic to climate change for a second, the rising sea levels in particularly for a county like yours, what impact will it have for you? And how are you preparing? 

Megan: Yeah. So if you look at the map of Pinellas county where we are. Not, a lot of people know Pinellas county, but if you look at the peninsula of Florida, you'll see another peninsula on the peninsula, on the west coast of Florida. So we're a peninsula on a peninsula, so we're surrounded by water on three sides. And so, yes, we're very vulnerable. The interesting part about it. You know, we've done a a lot of work on addressing sea level rise and climate change. I can tell you that as a county and as a state, we can't simply take the option of retreating from the coastline because the coastline's all around us, number one.

So we can't just evacuate the whole county. And number two, our lifeblood of our economy is tourism. I mean, it's our beaches. So we don't have the option of simply saying, well, I don't want to build that water booster station out there on the beach because,the sea level rise. Well now what are all these hotels going to do?

They need water supply. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. So really our approach is to manage and mitigate. And more specifically as a county, we have embarked on a vulnerability analysis. So looking at different sea level rise projections combined with, keep in mind, the hurricane and storm surge models that, you know, kind of combined with that and overlaying all of our critical assets to determine what is most vulnerable to us as a county, looking at all of our assets combined.

We've also implemented a sea level rise screening tool for all capital projects. So all capital projects that are planned, get run through a sea level rise screening tool so that we can make better informed decisions about what to do as we rebuild and rehabilitate various assets. So it's kind of what we're doing more broadly, and there's been some policies that were implemented county-wide. 

Sea level rise has to be incorporated into any master planning activities that we are doing. So we have been incorporating those into our master plans, but then there's also the issue of insurance, making sure that we have the right level of insurance. You know, if, and when there is catastrophic damages.

And so that is something that we've also been focused on is making sure we have appropriate insurance coverage. 

Mahesh: You know, 50, 70 years ago, our current infrastructure was built and we're thankful for that generation to have built this. Obviously we are on borrowed time now and you're reinvesting to rebuild it.

But 50, 70 years from now, right, I'm sure the residents would be thankful that we're thinking about those macro impacts and building that resilience into it because somebody has to do it. And it's a generational thing right? Unfortunately we, in the day of TIkToks, we just want gratification today and now, but what you're doing here is for the generation coming after so they can survive.

Megan: Right. Right. Infrastructure is a long-term investment. It's not a short term.

Mahesh: Now, as I was preparing for this, obviously there's a lot of research I was doing, but one of the things is you ran the collection, in wastewater treatment operations. You have two plants, South Cross Bayou, 22 MGD average treatment, and William Dunn, 6.5 MGD. As someone that has run these plants, what are the challenges in running them? But more importantly, if you had a crystal ball. Okay. Where do you think the future of treatment plants will evolve to? Where is the puck headed? 

Megan: Yeah, so I think, one of the biggest challenges was first, barriers to implementing technology. So working for government there's inherent barriers, you can't just pick something off the shelf and say, this might work well, let's try it.

You gotta go through a bidding process. You got to go through a competitive process for everything. And that inherently delays the process and you could end up with something that is not really the right technology that you were trying to get in the first place. So there's barriers there. I think partnering with certain institutions that we can overcome them, like the water research foundation and others that are collectively doing work and research to kind of vet a lot of these technologies.

The other aspect of it is implementing basically an asset management program. That was one of the big initiatives at the time. And it's still one of our initiatives, but getting really the culture change of let's not wait until something is broken to fix. Let's get the preventative maintenance and the predictive maintenance implemented, because that really wasn't there at the time.

When I had started there, it was a very reactive culture, which led to just continuous emergencies after emergency. So it took various proactive steps to get us out of that downward spiral, which we did, but yeah, that asset management culture and program and standing all that up was a big challenge, but I think it was a successful challenge.

And it was a worthwhile challenge to have the future, to your other point about the future. I think artificial intelligence in terms of water and wastewater treatment, I really don't think people are aware that it's coming and it's coming big time. You know, you see it out there. But if you look at the fact that we all are having workforce challenges, recruiting licensed operators, the retirement boom, et cetera.

Combined with the advancement of artificial intelligence. I mean, it's only a matter of time and it's not going to be a whole lot of time before wastewater water plants are just run by machines. And I don't know that we've given enough credit or there's been enough talks about it at various association meetings, I've been to conferences.

Because I do think that the social, the political, the implications of that are going to be tremendous. But I do see that as something that is coming in the future. 

Mahesh: Yeah, absolutely. And every sector is being hit with that mega trend. Whether you take automotive industry, we went from driving on your own to semi-autonomous driving, which we have today in the cars, or eventually autonomous driving.

So I feel every sector is moving towards this transition. And I think part of it is the utility sector is... we all know it's slow to adopt, but it's probably even more risk averse because of unknowns of potential implication on permits and discharges, et cetera. Right. But I actually don't think that's a problem. It's actually much easier to implement in utility industries and people give credit for, from my experience anyway.

Yeah. Just moving forward. And you touched on this topic when it comes to Pinellas County, the whole booming economic growth is built around water. Which inherently means you and your team have an instrumental role in keeping this pristine. Obviously ]that is a broad, you need a podcast just for that one topic, because there's so many things, but if you pinpoint one thing saying, this is how we are driving a pristine economy, a water-based economy, what would that be?

Megan: So as utility. Yes. Our impacts on the environment are extremely, extremely important. And lessening those impacts are extremely important. A lot of people don't realize this, but Tampa bay is actually a model for improving the ecological nature of a bay. I mean, Tampa Bay in the eighties was in a dire dire straits.

I mean, algae growth was everywhere. Algae blooms. I mean, you couldn't swim in the water. There was no dolphins. There's no fish. It was a disaster in the eighties due to a lot of nitrogen contribution into that bay from various, you know, the population growth, wastewater discharges, but also the phosphate industry as well.

And collectively, businesses and utilities came together and minimized and came up with the nitrogen management consortium and reduced nitrrogen discharges into the bay. And now, I mean, Tampa bay is healthier than it was in 1950, based on the sea grass growth. Now this was before the impact of Piney point, but, and that is run by the Tampa bay estuary program that we're all partners with.

So we are a model for others in the nation, as far as turning around an environment and getting it back to restoring an environment, actually what it once was. Currently our challenges are sanitary, sewer overflows. And with that regard, you know, we had a really big pivot point in terms of public perception, about five or six years ago when we were hit with a significant tropical storm, which turned into a hurricane actually hurricane Hemione.

And all of the utilities in the area have had a significant overflow events and issues or heavy rainfall. And the public really opened their eyes to the importance of a wastewater system. When they saw that it was really the first time, I think in a while that our public really saw that and said, Hey, what is going on with our wastewater system?

Up until that point, nobody really thought about wastewater sewer system. Who cares? I flush the toilet. It goes away. That really turned people's attention towards it. Out of that came a couple of things, but really that has turned our focus strategically towards SSO mitigation. So we have a multi-year wastewater collection program implemented that is aimed at reducing SSOs through building capacity, through reducing range, arrived, inflow and infiltration combined with also a septic to sewer conversion program.

We still have a number of septic tanks in the case. And there's no program to address them. Private sewer lateral policies were just adopted by the board and we are implementing those now to address the private, both commercial and residential contributions to inflow and infiltration. So our big issue, being in Florida, we have separate systems, we have storm water.

And so our separate systems were very flat. The groundwater table is very high. So we get a lot of infiltration into our system. I mean, some would be surprised to know, even when it's completely bone dry outside, we have some pipes that are 50% infiltration. It's just ground water getting into the pipe. There's no rain. It's just groundwater. So we're unique in Florida because of that reason, just the geography. That's what we sleep, eat and breathe. Every day, we're like, how do we reduce the SSOs? I mean, that's our number one focus right now. And also how do we address capacity at the plants, you know, to deal with the rain events. 

Mahesh: Right. I mean, clearly it's a hard engineering problem to solve because of the environment in which you have built your system in. And certainly there's no way around it other than building a robust system that can deal with it. You know, when you think about Florida, At least I don't think about water conservation.

Okay. It's because the water is all around us, but there's an initiative you have. That's kind of significant in nature. What is the progress you're making on per capita consumption reduction? 

Megan: Well, you're not alone, but when you think about Florida, what do you see in pictures of Florida? You see water everywhere.

You see beaches, you see streams and lakes and everything. In Florida, the problem is not going to be, we don't have enough water. The problem is that we're not going to have enough cheap water. I mean, we can build a desal plant all day long up and down the coast and pipe it in through central Florida.

It's going to cost a gazillion dollars and people's bills will be, you know, times six. And you're going to have a lot of public backlash to that in terms of the costs, but fresh water is actually. It's not plentiful in Florida. In terms of fresh water from the aquifers. And so, yeah, we've done a lot of work to reduce per capita consumption actually in 1990, our gallons per day per capita was about 156 gallons.

And in 2020, we're down to 76. So we've essentially cut it in half, even during a time of population growth that was occurring. So more people. We achieved less consumption of water, cut it in half. And primarily that was due to our reclaimed water systems being built out. Reclaimed water is our number one conservation tool.

We supply anywhere between 12 and 20 million gallons a day. That's 12 and 20 million gallons a day of fresh water that we're not using. And it's going towards irrigation, so it's tremendous, but I think we still have to do more. We are partnering with our wholesale water provider, Tampa Bay Water. There is an ongoing rebate program in place for various things like cooling towers, toilet rebates, et cetera.

But I think in order to get us to the next level, I mean, it's going to take potable reuse. It really is. And the state recognizes that. The state actually in 2020, while everyone was dealing with COVID, the state passed the most comprehensive water quality bill that the state has ever seen, the Clean Waterways Act.

And part of that was mandating our department of environmental protection to implement potable reuse rules. So that utilities had a clear navigation towards the permitting process for that. So that is in the midst right now. Those rules are not final, but they are being developed and they will be finalized probably within the next year or so.

Mahesh: Just hearing you. It's very clear that, you have a clarity on thinking when it comes to water consumptions, what your priorities are, and that's just excellent to see, how you are approaching all these challenges. You know, I looked at this partnership you have in the county, it's called wastewater, stormwater partnership.

There's 17 municipal leaders, several mayors on it. You're part of the technical team. Is it still actively working in where do you see, you know, the impact of this in the next three years? 

Megan: So this group is still active. In fact, we just had a meeting last week and the partnership was born out of some of those issues that I mentioned earlier with the hurricanes and the SSOs that occurred.

It was born to address some of those issues collectively as a county. You know, we as a county utility, we own two of the wastewater plants, but there's 13 waste water plants. I mean, they're owned by cities and others. So the public doesn't see municipal boundaries when it comes to their wastewater system. They expect to leave home, go to work, and they only be in a totally different sewer system, but there's no blinking sign saying you're leaving the Pinellas county sewer system and you're going to city of Clearwater now, or you're going to St. Pete. Okay. So from a political and public perspective, I think the desire was. I don't care that your'e St Pete, and your Pinellas, and you're Clearwater and your Oldsmar, and you know, all these different cities, we as a county need to come together and address this and come up with a solution. So the partnership was born out of that, and there's no formal governance structure.

It's horizontal coordination is what it is. We did collectively agree on a seven point strategic action plan. And we are progressing through nearly all of the elements. The last one that was. Last on the list was the private system component. Because as you are aware, if you think about water, I mean, we can plug up our system all day long.

The water's just going to move over to the private side and same amount of water is going to get in the system. So you can line pipes all day long, but if you're not lining the private side and addressing it, you're not going to solve the problems. So we just recently passed our private zero lateral ordinance with the county.

And we're hoping that we'll be a model for the other cities. So that's kind of that last piece of the strategic action plan, but it is still active. And I think it's been really important to, like I said, address the public concern, really come together and collaborate and say, Hey, you know, the public's really angry about this, but we need to communicate what we're doing to address the issue.

You know, we're local government. So rather than getting defensive and saying, Hey, you know, we, we don't have the funding, we don't have this. It's not our fault. It was really kind of saying, Hey, yeah, there is a problem. We have to recognize that and we have to address it and we have to do things to correct.

And out of that, a measurable outcome was funding. I mean, nearly all the cities and the county achieved pretty substantial rate increases partially as a result of that partnership coming together. And so here's what we need to do. We're all unified in our response and we're going to need money to do it.

And we, as a county achieved a unanimous approval on our rate increase. And that was a, basically a multi-year rate increase that in effect was a 40% rate increase over four years and unanimous approval. I mean, it's unheard of, right. So we did achieve measurable results and we do still meet. And really now we're trying to measure that out.

You know, let's see how we're doing in terms of building dashboards and SSO dashboards to see is the work that we're doing resulting in a measurable outcome. 

Mahesh: And involving mayors is always beneficial, especially when it comes to water infrastructure. And I like what you said. In fact, in episode one, uh, Sue McCormick said the same point, saying pipes don't have political boundaries.

I just changed from one jurisdiction and another jurisdiction. Right. So your point's absolutely right. Listen, I want to switch from business to, you know, more personal something about you. You started as an engineer, climbed all the way to the top of running an organization, and we talked about it. How have you changed as a leader? But if there's one leadership lesson you would like to share. 

Megan: So one lesson that I would like to share is that you have to, at some point in your leadership progression, and typically it's at the point where you're moving from supervisor to manager, right? So you're supervising supervisors now, right?

Not frontline workers. You need to stop trying to solve problems yourself, and you need to implement programs and systems that enable others to solve problems independently. And I think that's where a lot of people fail when making that. I see the hardest transition for people is from supervisor to manager, because they want to be able to touch everything and deal with everything themselves and have their hands on it.

And they need to take a step up and back and implement actual programs and systems that enable others to do. You know, when I became a manager, I picked up books on management and started reading them and learning different tools and systems and methods to do that. I think management is a science. I talked to people that somehow think leadership is inherent. That you have to be born with it . It's like all these characteristics you have to have, and it doesn't help you see all these random leadership quotes on LinkedIn that, you know, aren't based on any research, you know, management isn't about being a Saint. You're not a perfect human being. It's a science and it can be learned just like you learn anything else. 

Mahesh: Exactly. And then you fail and you pick it up and you keep trying, right? There's no one perfect answer for this thing. And actually I love the point you made from solving problems to creating a framework for others to solve the problem that you were used to solving.

So creating that structure, the process, the framework for that, cause that's surely is almost like a code. Right here, coaching the folks that can do this on their own. Okay. So last question. For me, having a spouse who has a stem, who is a Silicon valley exec now, and other, you know, very active leadership role, and this is important, really the role women have played, but more importantly, what are you proud of up until now?

And what is one thing moving forward, you want to leave behind to the community that you serve that you will be proud of in future? 

Megan: Well, I think the one thing I'm proud of, uh, in terms of being a role model for other women, I've actually in my position now have been able to recruit other women into leadership positions in my organization.

Not because they're women, but because they're talented individuals. And I think that what I have seen is that other women. I think to some extent, hesitate from being put into a leadership position because they feel as though their family life and their personal life will suffer. I think that it also comes out of a lack of education about management and leadership in our educational institutions.

We learn a lot about science and math and, and other things. We've. Nobody teaches you about management. And so what I had to kind of coach and mentor with other women in moving up into the organization is that there's this idea that you're just going to be working all day at night. I mean, there's just this fallacy that I just, I'm just going to be working 12 hour days.

And I had to say, no, that's absolutely not what it is. You're going to be working the same amount of time. You're going to be working on different things and different levels. You know, if you do it the right way, you're going to be focusing on higher level achievements and higher level programs. You're not just going to be working more hours.

And so I really have helped to have been somewhat of a role model to other females, to encourage them to take a chance, you know, get into a leadership position and you don't know what you're capable of until you try it. I would say legacy for the future. In terms of utilities and built infrastructure and some of the things we're working on right now, I want to build a regional biosolids facility that is actually more of a resource recovery combined with organic waste, with our solid waste partners, looking at food waste, you know, fats, oils, and grease, and biosolids. So not only a regional facility with all of the cities combined, but something that will lower our energy usage. And we'll address emerging contaminants. So looking at solar options, solar drying options, combined with something to address PFAS, because that is that's going to be a major, major change with biosolids treatment.

And we want to eliminate that from continuing and persisting in the environment. We want to address it. And I'm hoping that we formulate a model for the rest of the state to follow in Florida. 

Mahesh: Right? The reason is fascinating to me. The legacy you want to leave behind is you want to create a circular economy, circular economy within Pinellas county, through this recovery, whether it's energy, waste, nutrients, et cetera.

And I'll tell you, that's where the puck is headed. When it comes to wastewater utilities. That really is where the puck is headed. You know, it's a 10 year journey. It's not something that's going to happen tomorrow. I believe the utility leaders are not going to be called utility leaders anymore. But they are essentially circular economy leaders.

They're recovering the resources, putting it back into the local region. 

Megan: Absolutely. 

Mahesh: Listen, it's a fascinating conversation. You joined in a water business, um, for selfish reasons. You want to stay local, right? Moved up to be a leader. And every one of the leadership concepts you talked about have been terrific.

And the fact that a workforce is your biggest challenge. You worked at the plant level and you see AI as a very important element. You're looking at new partnership models, especially if our skills and talents that you can't hide on your own to build that ecosystem. And really something you're proud of to be a role model for women.

And eventually you want to leave behind the circular economy in the county you live in. It's a fascinating discussion. I loved every moment of it, Megan. okay. And I want to thank you for joining. 

Megan: Well, thank you, Mahesh. Thanks for having me.

Mahesh: A real pleasure.