Over the course of this conversation, we dive into the journey and leadership philosophy of Pieter Van Ry, who leads both South Platte Renew and the City of Englewood’s water utility. Pieter shares how he transitioned from a consultant in stormwater management to a dual-role leader overseeing drinking water and wastewater services for over 300,000 people. His story is one of transformation—both personal and organizational.
We explore how he manages the two distinct utilities, which are legally and operationally separate. South Platte Renew serves a regional area through a joint venture between Englewood and Littleton, while the Englewood utility is more localized. Pieter splits his time equally between the two, relying on strong deputy leadership to maintain continuity and operational excellence.
One of the main challenges both entities faced was decades of underinvestment. Pieter focused early on building long-term financial models and sustainable funding mechanisms. He emphasizes transparency with policymakers, using clear data to show the long-term consequences of decisions. His team successfully leveraged federal funding like WIFIA and the Drinking Water Revolving Fund to modernize infrastructure while raising rates carefully and with community backing—even during COVID.
On the drinking water side, the transformation has been more severe. The utility was decades behind in staffing, technology, and systems. Simple operations like backwashes were still being done with stopwatches. Today, that same utility is removing all 3,000 of its lead service lines and has increased staff by 40%.
Leadership is a central theme. Pieter believes in fostering an environment where people love coming to work. That mindset ties directly into performance, innovation, and long-term success. He embraces delegation, transparency, and accountability as leadership cornerstones and promotes a culture that allows for calculated risks and learning through failure.
A key outcome of this leadership approach is the development of PARC (Pilot and Research Center), an open innovation platform designed to plug researchers, universities, and technology companies directly into the treatment process. The idea is to invest early in flexible infrastructure—across liquid, solids, and gas systems—so external innovators can rapidly pilot their solutions. PARC enables Pieter’s team to stay ahead of looming regulations and drive customer value through smarter, cheaper, and more sustainable treatment technologies.
As we wrap up, Pieter reflects on his legacy. He wants his departure to be a “blip”—a sign that he’s built resilient systems, not just personal authority. And on public trust, he’s clear: acknowledge mistakes, transparently share progress, and always circle back to communicate results. Trust, like infrastructure, is built over time—and it’s earned through action.
City of Englewood Utilities: https://www.englewoodco.gov/government/city-departments/utilities
South Platte Renew: https://southplatterenewco.gov/
21st Century Water - Pieter Van Ry
Speakers: Mahesh Lunani & Pieter Van Ry
[Music Playing]
Voiceover (00:01):
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 (00:33):
Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I am joined here by my friend Pieter Van Ry, director of South Platte Renew, Colorado's third largest wastewater treatment facility, and is also the City of Englewood's drinking water utility leader.
Pieter brings 25 years of experience with his deep engineering background; he’s also a utility leader with an executive MBA from Daniels College of Business. I'm really excited to actually talk to Pieter because there's so many new things he's doing in that organization, and also, he teaches and speaks about water leadership, which for me is a fascinating topic to learn from. Welcome, Pieter.
Pieter Van Ry (01:14):
Well, thank you, Mahesh. I'm really excited to be here and to chat today.
Mahesh Lunani (01:18):
Look forward to it, likewise. I want to get right into it. Your 25 years civil engineering background, what got you into the water sector and what milestones got you from an intern to a director?
Pieter Van Ry (01:32):
I've always had a love for water and a love for engineering. So, when I went to school originally — I'm originally from upstate New York, and I went to The State University in New York College of Environmental Science at Forestry at Syracuse, which is (SUNY ESF) for anybody who's listening. But it's actually a small forestry school, but they have a significant focus on water related topics. And so, my degree is in engineering with a focus on water.
And then I came out of there, moved from upstate New York to Colorado 29 years ago, and really just started a journey that started in the environmental space, but quickly moved into water. And how that happened is I was a consultant for about the first third of my career. So, I was doing consulting work, and most of that consulting work was actually in the stormwater space. So, I was doing highway drainage and local drainage systems, hydrology, hydraulics, things like that.
And then I had the opportunity to move from that consulting space into the public sector to help build a stormwater utility. And that was how I got into utilities. And being able to lead the development of a utility from the ground up around 2005, 2006 timeframe really was what piqued my interest around leadership and strategic thinking and growing and building organizational sectors, and then ultimately leading organizations.
It was that experience moving into the public sector 20 years ago that shifted me from core design engineering work into leading water and wastewater and stormwater-related organizations. And ultimately through the course of a few other job transitions, I moved from manager to deputy director to ultimately, now where I'm the director of these two organizations, and I get to be the director of these two organizations.
I love what I do. I love my job, and it's been a great journey to get here, and I'm really excited to be where I'm at right now.
Mahesh Lunani (03:26):
No, I can tell. So, New York to Colorado, consultant to public sector, and stormwater to wastewater and water. So, big transitions as you took this leadership on. But I want to talk about this dual role. We've had 44 episodes with all your peers in the past, but I've never had any guest on this podcast that is head of two different entities. In your case, you got the South Platte Renew, which is wastewater and the City of Englewood, which is the drinking water side. How does it work?
Pieter Van Ry (03:59):
Yeah, so it's the same but it's different. And so, what I mean by that is there's a number of utilities across the US, tons of utilities across the US who do water, sewer and storm, that one water focus, and a lot of organizations are set up that way. The uniqueness to this dual role is South Platte Renew is a regional joint venture entity that is administered by the City of Englewood, but it's co-owned by Englewood and Littleton.
So, we serve this larger southwest metro Denver area as part of that joint venture. Well, we administratively are organized through the City of Englewood. Well, the City of Englewood also has a water utility just specific to City of Englewood. And about a year and a half into leading South Platte Renew, the leadership at Englewood said, “Hey, can you lead the utility as well?”
So, South Platte serves about 300,000 people, the Englewood utility serves about 35,000 people. What makes it unique is the fact that because of the way the ownership structure is for each of the organizations, I have to treat them as two completely separate organizations.
And so, I split my time between the two, but I have a complete staff on the one side and another complete staff on the other side. I mean they can talk to each other, and they work together and exchange information, but they can't do work for each other. Whereas in other utilities that have all three, they can cross divisionally, do work from one to the other. So, that's what makes it unique, is you have to maintain that separation because of that ownership model.
Mahesh Lunani (05:25):
I don't know if it's the right analogy, but you hire one, you get another one for free. So, it sounds like you're two in one role that you're playing just how organizationally and legally they're kind of different.
Pieter Van Ry (05:37):
Yeah, I think it was a unique opportunity that the circumstances set up the way they did. And actually, incidentally, my first day in the dual role was March 16th, 2020. So, you can remember what happened on March 17th. We sent everybody home for six months because of COVID. So, on day two, the role was already a little bit unique and challenging.
Mahesh Lunani (05:57):
Oh wow, I didn't know that. What a milestone there in an unpredictable way. I want to talk about South Platte Renew; you serve 300,000 end customers, or residents. What's the scale of this operation and what percentage of time you split on the wastewater side and what are the unique challenges there on that end?
Pieter Van Ry (06:17):
For myself, I split my time 50/50 between the two. They each have unique challenges. What makes this all work is I have division deputy directors and they all on either side handle their divisions really, really well. I have a bunch of skilled leaders who really take care of their divisions. And so, it's easy for me to split my time because it's more of an organizational strategic direction focus, which can be utilized between the two more readily in a split fashion.
From a South Platte perspective, the main things that we're looking at — and I think it holds true similarly for the water utility is probably the most significant thing that we've done work on, is sustainable long-term funding. We're no different than many utilities across the US that have been established for decades and had many, many years of underinvestment or limited investment or no investment. So, there's all this deferred maintenance and deferred investment that had built up.
And so, part of that is like not doing ongoing rate increases that keep up with just the cost of doing business. And so, for both South Platte Renew and Englewood Utilities, one of my first core strategic focuses was on ensuring that we developed sustainable long-term financial modeling plans such that we don't get ourselves in it, we don't make all these improvements and make all these changes and fix all these things, and then say, “Yep, we're done.” And then 15 years later we're in the same boat again.
So, I think really from a challenge for South Platte Renew and equally on the utility side, it was fixing that old way of doing business where out of sight, out of mind, don't ask for rate increases, just make it work with what you got. And then ultimately, you get to a point where it becomes unsustainable.
And so, we're in a much better space now than we were five, six years ago when I first got here. And we do have long-term good financial plans. Part of that was actually accessing programs like WIFIA and the Drinking Water Revolving Fund Loan. And so, we could not have addressed that under investment without those federal programs, which have just worked extremely well for us.
Mahesh Lunani (08:25):
I'm not envious of the position you have because you have a really hard job in how do you maintain the funding to keep the infrastructure in top shape, not just keep the lights turned on, but at the same time, you're handcuffed because you can’t raise rates and the value of water and sewer is not priced at a point how we value our life. So, it's a very difficult position you’re in.
Pieter Van Ry (08:51):
So, I think what's been successful for us is we let the data and the information guide the discussion for our policymakers. And so, what we do is we actually just present with extreme transparency, “Here's what we're looking at,” so we can raise rates this much and here's what we'll be able to provide from a service perspective. We can raise rates less and here's what goes away. Or we can not raise rates, and the continued deterioration of the infrastructure will continue.
And so, being able to simply and effectively explain a complex story, it's not just one year, it's five years, 10 years, 20 years, to policymakers so that they can step back and say, “Well yeah, this is something that we should be investing in because it's important for our community survival.” But we as utility professionals, I think it's incumbent upon us to be able to translate that message in a way that they're the policymakers, but we need to present them the best information so that they can know the effects of one decision versus another.
And I think that's what we've done really well, is to … we did really strong master planning, we got a good baseline understanding of here's how the system is, here's what it's going to take to improve it, here's how we're going to make that work.
And then we're extremely transparent in reporting back, and we come back a couple times to say, “Here's where we were five years ago, here's where we were three years ago, here's where we are today to continue to tell that story.” I think what we sometimes lose is that story of how far we've come in a period of time. And it really comes down to that storytelling of the effectiveness of the work that is transforming a utility.
Mahesh Lunani (10:36):
Yeah, I bet your MBA skills are put to good use. And I'm an engineer too; we all go deep technical quickly and you lose the policy makers within first two minutes. But the way you are describing to me, it sounds like you really let the facts speak for itself, and you communicate in a way that's simple enough that they understand the gravity and the magnitude of what needs to be accomplished. And every leader doesn't have that yet because we have a lot of engineers that can't translate in terms you're talking about.
Pieter Van Ry (11:10):
I think you're right. But where I think the engineering background still helps is you almost have to understand both sides of that story to be able to know how to make that translation from here's the really complex technical issue, how can I make it understandable for people who aren’t in the water space who aren't in this business day to day in a way that they can say, “Yeah, that's actually something we should be investing in. That makes sense.”
Mahesh Lunani (11:33):
No doubt, you need both sides of the coin to make the story, which you just talked about. It cannot be just one side. So, I want to talk about the water side of the equation. You said 25, 30,000 residents you serve.
Pieter Van Ry (11:44):
35,000 is our service.
Mahesh Lunani (11:46):
35,000?
Pieter Van Ry (11:47):
Citizens, yeah. So, it's about 11,000 accounts.
Mahesh Lunani (11:49):
So, what are the main challenges there that you are encountering? It sounds like you spend 50% of the time on that side of that business as well. So, what are you running into that's different or unique that is specific to the community you serve?
Pieter Van Ry (12:04):
I've talked about for both of them this idea of this underinvestment and transforming that. And so, South Platte Renew was in a state of underinvestment, but we had done in the late 2000s, 2006 to 2008, a major expansion project.
So, there's a whole lot of new infrastructure at South Platte Renew that had been in place. It was just coming to a point where it’s reaching useful life and if we weren't addressing that moving forward, we were going to start running into problems with the long-term sustainability of the system.
On the water side, it was not the case. On the water side, it's an example of what I think we're seeing more and more across the country of the utility that was severely underinvested in for 30, 40 years. It built to the point where we were so understaffed, so underinvested, no systems, everything was on paper, we're still doing backwashes with stopwatches.
I mean, think about that. Where we are today, we're doing backwashes with stopwatches and we're in a major metropolitan area, and our filter interface panel, we couldn't find parts unless we went on eBay for it.
So, it had gotten so far behind. Those are just two examples in the treatment plant. Take that and expand it across the entire utility. So, it's been a nonstop walking the utility back from the edge of the cliff essentially for the last five years. And we are in a tremendously better place than we were five years ago. We've added 40% more staff, we've fixed that financial, we've raised rates significantly. We raised rates during COVID because we were so far behind, we had to.
The thing about WIFIA and those other loan programs is you have to have the revenue to support the debt. And so, you can't just go and get a hundred million dollars unless you raise the rates to show that you can pay back the hundred million dollars.
And so, I think the first thing was quickly to try and figure out what are the major things that we need to fix, get a plan that supports the rate increase plan, go through and fix the revenue side so that you can then go access more debt funding, and then package all that together to now we're in the space execution where we're executing on just a number of capital projects.
One of our most significant one, which is we're removing all of our lead service lines. We think we have about 3,000 out of 11,000 accounts that have lead service lines and we anticipate we'll be done with that project in about a year. Whereas five years ago, it wasn't even funded. And so, I think it's been a remarkable challenge to transform it out of just, like I said, it was like on the edge of the cliff of just underinvestment.
Mahesh Lunani (14:50):
Yeah, you're like in a century ago, if you're doing stopwatches and it sounds like you have 30% of lead lines. I mean it's a major problem. By the way, this area of Englewood and Littleton, what kind of community? Is this a growing community?
Pieter Van Ry (15:05):
No, we're essentially landlocked. The interesting thing about the Englewood water utility is we’re completely surrounded by Denver Water. So, if everybody knows Denver Water is one of the biggest utilities in the US, we are a hundred percent surrounded.
So, if you look at the Denver Water Service area, you see this small spot in the middle that's not Denver water, well, that's the Englewood water utility because back in the 40s and the 50s, the community leaders said, “You know what, we want to be our own utility.” And so, we have been ever since.
But I think the community itself, it's a working-class community. It's not a high-income community, it's a suburban community, but I would say there's a fair amount of economic disadvantage, which actually made raising rates even harder. Because you've got this lower income — not low income, but like lower income areas. We're not talking about one of those areas where you get the really big homes in the gated communities. That's not Englewood.
Mahesh Lunani (15:58):
No, see you got a challenge to deal with on many fronts. I want to talk about your leadership. I know you're big into water leadership. What's your leadership philosophy and how are you permeating that in these two entities that you're leading?
Pieter Van Ry (16:13):
Yeah, so I think I’ll go back to like some of the principles I talked to my staff about on a regular basis and continue to repeat it. And the most fundamental of which is (and I mean this) I want people to love to come to work.
And the reason why I want that is because on one hand, that just seems like a really good goal anyways, but on the other hand, when I was doing my MBA, I had to do some research in my economics and finance classes, was the connectivity to how people feel in their job space as it relates to economic production out of an organization.
So, how the financials improve for an organization when people are happy and engaged and dedicated and like their peers and all those kinds of things, it fundamentally comes down to happy people work harder because they’re engaged.
And so, I talk to my staff all the time about that. That's fundamentally a core goal and core principle, is to create that environment that maximizes that as much as possible. Realizing that we can't be happy all the time.
And it's not like we're trying to develop some kind of utopia. It's that connectivity. If you look at all the Gallup work and things like that on employee engagement, so much of employee engagement is about how their work environment is actually improving or helping their motivation or causing them to be demotivated.
When you start to connect: how, as leaders, what we can do with the environments and how we set up the organizational culture, try to guide the organizational culture, it really then translates to that engagement piece.
And so, within that is an extreme amount of delegation, making sure that people have the ability to do their jobs without micromanagement, the ability to innovate and take risks and not have it turn into a punitive response, looking at failures as just the next step towards finding the right solution within reason. I mean, there are some failures that you know are too far.
Mahesh Lunani (18:08):
You don't want it exactly. There's a goalpost, how much you can fail.
Pieter Van Ry (18:12):
Yeah, and repeated failure is another piece of that. There's repeated failure, that’s a different story. But also, within that is just the idea of supporting the staff through accountability to make sure that if people are aligned or are engaged, that we as leaders aren't ignoring that. Because when we ignore that, we're saying to everybody else, “You don't matter.”
And that I think is putting the people who are dedicated and engaged and all aligned in the right direction first. And by doing the hard work of coaching and holding people accountable, I think is what helps keep everybody on a level playing field in terms of meeting those standards of excellence and things like that that we're trying to accomplish here.
Mahesh Lunani (18:52):
Pieter, I don't know if you recognize, I speak to 200 utilities a year, but it's not normal what you said that letting people fail, letting them take certain level of risks they can do. I mean, utilities are the most risk averse culture on many fronts, small, medium, large. You are dealing with operator licenses and things like that.
So, for how long you've been doing this cultural transformation and for reasons you said, happy people are more productive, and you give them delegation and allow them to play risks and all that. How long have you been doing this, and have you actually seen an outcome that you said that directly is a result of the kind of stuff you just talked about?
Pieter Van Ry (19:37):
I think the most significant component of — and I see this as our long-term sustainability as an organization because it's only going to get harder. Moving forward, the more regulations, more funding scrutiny, more competition for the customer's dollar, all those kinds of things.
And we have this, what's called our pilot and research center, which is a concept that we started to play around with in 2019. And we've tried to organically develop it into this approach to innovation for our organization. And we believe we've gotten there.
We rolled it out officially last year at WEFTEC, we had a booth at WEFTEC, we're going to have a booth at WEFTEC again this year. And really what it is, this idea that as an organization, we should be integrating innovation in every aspect of the innovation. I think one of the analogies I use is you can go anywhere on this plant site and there's generally electricity and you can plug something in; you can get access to electricity.
I want to be able to set us up such that anyone who wants to innovate anything can go into the entire plant site, the entire processes and the systems and easily plug in. So, take away that those barriers to how easy it is to connect in and start innovating.
So much of innovation is stopped by the bureaucracies that gets involved, the systems that just don't allow for the connection easily, the internal risk averse culture. And so, I think as I translate the leadership philosophy to what does it mean for the organization as a whole, is this PARC, our pilot research center concept is really where you see that in action.
And so, we're still in our developmental stage, I would say. I think we're past our first conceptual developmental stage to now we're really starting to hone it in and figure out what it is such that it ultimately becomes part of who we are. Just like we treat wastewater for 300,000 customers a day. We look at innovation for the industry and our organization as just a core part of how we operate, and integrate it completely across the entire organization. So, I think that's how it translates.
Mahesh Lunani (21:54):
That's a great segue because it's a direct outcome of the culture you're trying to drive in the organization. So, PARC, and I remember seeing presentation from you and one of the main reasons I wanted to have you as a guest on this, is this topic which I want to unpack and double click.
PARC, I view this as like the way you described it in the past also, it's like an open-source platform essentially. You serve a set of communities that are not necessarily most affluent to some respect. It's amazing that you would think that a PARC or a concept like that would be done by the large entities that have a fair amount of innovation funds. But for you to dream big in the environment in which you lead is itself a monumental reach.
So, how do you fund this? And let's just go deep into what is PARC, and what are the outcomes you want out of this, and what do you see innovations coming out of it?
Pieter Van Ry (23:04):
So, PARC is our fundamental approach to how we innovate as an organization, and it's our organized structure of how we do it. So, it's not just one-offs over here, it's not just some small subset of people, often one area. It is an integrated aspect of everyone's job here. So, it becomes something that everybody here is connected to.
And this is something we're working on at South Platte Renew. So, it's working on the South Platte Renew site. Eventually, I'd like to translate it to the water utility. And then South Platte Renew service area, we have some definitely affluent parts of South Platte Renew service area. The Englewood service area is a little bit less affluent.
But how we do it is we have to get the policy makers to see the value of it. And so, everything that we do from a messaging around PARC is driving towards how is this improving customer value? And so, we know that we have significant regulatory drivers in the about the 10-to-15-year window that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars for this facility.
And so, I've said instead of waiting until the last minute of the deadline and saying what technology is available, we know we've got 15 years, how about we get ahead of it and create a space where we invest a small amount of money up front to bring in all different kinds of technologies and all different kinds of people who innovate to not only try and solve our problem, but ultimately, solve problems for the water industry nationally and internationally.
So, instead of being on the back end where we're waiting until the deadline to implement the solution, we think we can drive better value for our customers by finding a better solution and spending the next 15 years investing incrementally on better solutions. And we're starting to see that occur because we're driving the evolution of our systems here in a way that we wouldn't, if we were just waiting until the deadlines, then we said, “Well, we're just going to do a BNR and everything's good.”
And so, how that works and why the community leaders support it is because everything that we do keeps that peace in mind of we have customers and our job is to drive the best value for that customer. And so, when we are doing this, we look at everything through that lens of how is this driving a better value for our customer?
And when they see actual data and results and transparent reporting that shows that we are trying to drive that value to the customer, it's easier for them to support the philosophy and a lot of your policymakers like being on the leading edge as opposed to the trailing edge of an issue. And if you frame it as we're going to lead this, they get excited about it. But it can't be just this, throw a bunch of money at it without having real good guardrails, structure, and reporting around how that money is being used. And so, that's how we do it.
Mahesh Lunani (26:08):
As you were saying it, Pieter, I mean at some point, you should go around the country and be able to impart (no, seriously) this mindset across the country because I think it's going to be super valuable and super. So, whenever you see PARC has reached a stage of maturity that you believe it's creating the kind of outcomes you've done, you've got a great story to go and basically productionize it in every system.
So, I want to talk about the vision you have moving forward. Clearly PARC is a very important component, but related to that, is it treatment? Is it hardware? Is it sensor? Is it digital AI? Where do you feel the emphasis are going to be on innovations coming out of PARC would be, where do you see that?
Pieter Van Ry (27:04):
One of the tenets of PARC (and this is going to be a simple answer that you're probably not going to like) is it's all of them. And so, fundamentally, we have to translate this to what is our core purpose? Our core purpose is treatment. So, our job is to treat wastewater, turn it into clean water, discharge it to our rivers. That's what our customers are paying for.
How we do that? The technology, the AI, the systems, all those kinds of things. They entrust us to be the experts to say, “These are the things that we think is going to do that more efficiently to better utilize your rate payer dollar.” I think from our perspective right now, we've gone from a couple partnerships to, I think we're upwards of 30 different research partnerships and things like that just in the span of a few years.
And we want to keep that growing, and then there's going to be a point in time where there's just too many. And at that moment, that's when I think we'll start to decide … we have a stage gate process that we have to say here's the ones that make it through the first stage and second.
And so, we're not there yet because we haven't exceeded the available capacity of what we can do. And so, right now, our approach is you got something you want to innovate and a wastewater plant is the space that you want to innovate at, come talk to us because we want to see … because every aspect of what we do can be innovated.
Mahesh Lunani (28:30):
That's true, that's true. Anything in the value chain, in the tech stack that supports your cleaning process or treatment process. Yeah, no, that's a really good mindset to have. I want to know how much money you’ve set aside for this stuff.
Pieter Van Ry (28:43):
The thing that we did that was unique, that was different than I think what you see in other organizations was in your world, one of the main things you try to do is you try to take away the customer's pain point. And so, the customer in this instance was those technology providers that want to innovate something. And so, what's the challenge and the pain point? It's getting connected to the system.
And so, what we did is we spent I think it was about a million and a half dollars creating a space where we piped a set of the process waters to four defined slots that a company or someone who has a pilot trailer can back up to one of these slots, and in less than half a day, a few hours, they can be completely connected and up and running with data and electricity and process water to the degree that they want to run already taking care of the second they want to get on site.
And so, we started that first location three years ago, built that, and have had trailers there. The most significant of which was the DPR trailer, which is The Colorado School of Mines trailer that right now, I think is in Silicon Valley, but we think it's actually coming back to us at some point. We hope it does. So, that was like the first step. That facilitates more connection of more trailers and more pilot studies to address these streams that we have piped there.
And then we're currently in the process of designing our solid site. So, this is one that's more dedicated to solid, same kind of thing though that's probably in that million framework. And then we have a secondary liquid site that's a smaller, probably half a million, something like that. And so, we're doing this upfront investment in something that you wouldn't normally do because you don't see the benefit of it until after it starts to come online.
So, I think overall, we've spent a few million on it over the last five years, but we're very cautious to not overspend too much too soon. So, we're not building some big building and saying, “Here's PARC, now come to us.” It's these incremental steps and it's really driving towards what is the customer need, and the customer in this case, universities, technology providers, consulting firms, they're the customer in this space. So, how are we engaging them as a customer?
Mahesh Lunani (31:07):
Yeah, so not only did you invest in this incubator, but you created this open-source platform for plug and play from your stream. So, it truly is, and also, it's what's good for your entity, but what's good for the entire sector. And it's something that we learn.
Pieter Van Ry (31:24):
One of the other sites is our gas site. So, we have a gas recovery system that we put in place in 2019. And so, we have a gas system that anybody who wants to work with a renewable natural gas, we can compress some cylinders for them, and they go off and study it. And so, we've got a couple projects with NREL and some universities across the US to help maximize the production of renewable natural gas.
And incidentally, just two months ago, our gas system that we installed in 2019 paid itself off. So, we have paid off the initial investment, and with all the costs of operations and everything, we have truly reached the break-even point where August was the first month where we're generating profit, but it's really rate offsetting revenue.
And so, it is a profitable system that took this innovative mindset to get in place, which actually occurred before I got here. So, it was already there. But getting it to pay itself off in five and a half years, we're really excited about the fact that it's not just a system we put in place, but we made it economically viable.
Mahesh Lunani (32:29):
Oh, congratulations on that. So, it sounds like you got the liquid stream, the solid stream, and then the gas stream as platforms. I want to ask this question on what do you want your legacy to be, one as you look forward? And I'm not saying you're retiring, Pieter, it just doesn't seem like one. You are energized, enjoying really what you're doing, but what do you want to be known for?
And then I want to wrap with one question. Public trust is critical and just because 50 plus percent of folks in America don't trust the water they drink, that's just statistics. And given you've been successful and able to communicate well to the policymakers in your community, what do you think is a blueprint for a great public trust campaign?
So, I've asked you two questions. One, what do you want to be known for? And then what does it take to build public trust?
Pieter Van Ry (33:26):
So, we're all going to leave, eventually we're all going to leave our organizations. And what I hope occurs when I leave and what I really work hard to make sure is set up is that when I leave for this organization, it's a blip. And what I mean by that is I want to make sure that there's all the systems in place such that when I or anybody leaves the organization, there's a blip, but it doesn't cause a regression or somewhat of a collapse because the person with all the knowledge and the experience walked out the door and now, we're stuck.
And so, really that's about the systems aspect of this, is creating broader organizational systems that ensure that at the time that I leave, I want the next person to come in and build off the platform and take it the direction they want to take it, and not necessarily have it just all through not. And so, I think, from a legacy perspective, that's what I want for our organization and for both organizations. And I think if that happens, then naturally, the legacy for me as an individual is such that it informs that legacy. Because if I leave and the whole thing collapses, what does that mean?
Mahesh Lunani (34:36):
It was not worth it. You want to make your work completely inheritable-
Pieter Van Ry (34:41):
Yes.
Mahesh Lunani (34:42):
By your successor. And they can take it in the direction they want to do. By the way, it's funny you said that we have a 10-point Aquasight way and one of them is exactly this: make your work inheritable so you can grow into something else. If you don't, you're the only one that everything depends on, then it’ll collapse.
Pieter Van Ry (35:04):
That's right. And I think so many of our organizations for so long, we're set up that way. And not even our organizations, but subsets of our organizations, the one person who knows all the data and they've known it for 30 years and they don't share it with anybody, and then they leave and everybody's like what are we doing?
And I think there's an industry transformation around that in the sense that we're getting away from that idea that you protect your job by hoarding information, you protect your job by actually trusting that by making more open source your information, what you do, you actually become more valuable in an organization.
Mahesh Lunani (35:38):
A hundred percent. And I believe in that philosophy. And it's great the way you're thinking about it. If you exit and when you exit, it should be a blip.
Pieter Van Ry (35:47):
That's the goal.
Mahesh Lunani (35:48):
It's a strong foundation you’ve left behind. Now, I want to talk about public trust. It's really key. So, what's your thoughts on that?
Pieter Van Ry (35:54):
So, I think public trust has not been a smooth road. I'm going to go with the water utility on this. It has not been a smooth road. Like I said, we were at the edge of the cliff and there were a few things that occurred that the systems weren't in place for, that we ended up losing some public trust on that we had to rebuild.
We had an issue where we actually ended up with a boil water order because of a small E coli contamination to one service line, but it happened to be where we pulled the sample, we determined it was in the meter pit. But at that point in time to protect the health and safety of the community, we didn't know at the time you have to do that. And so, those were some dark days early on during the pandemic and really just a challenge there.
Pieter Van Ry (36:37):
And so, we've been building not just from out of sight, out of mind, but visible and not for good reason. And the way I think we've done that is we acknowledged it. We said, “Here's what was wrong, here's why it went wrong. Here's where underinvestment will create more and more of these problems.”
So, we tied it to one of our goals, which was we need more investment in the utility to prevent this from occurring in the future. And then we transparently showed, here's all the programmatic things that we think need to be fixed. And then we followed up two and a half years later and said, here's our progress on these programmatic things. And there's probably 30 — take a water utility, take every aspect of the water utility. And we've been making improvements on those aspects.
And then we're about to go back to our council again in October for the five-year check in to tell the story of it. We are at the point of collapse to some degree, close. I mean, you see this across the country with water utilities that are at that point, and being able to show the progression because when you say we need to raise rates, the common rate payer doesn't understand you have to spend $4 million on the electrical system in the water plant. They don't connect those two. They just think, “Where's the money going? You haven't done anything with my water.”
And so, it's being able to as much as you can through the policymakers inform them, and then it's getting out in the community. Fortunately, our two cities have community events throughout the summer, and we always have a table, and we listen to people, we do a customer survey, and we know in our customer survey that there is a subset of people who are frustrated with the water system, don't like the water.
And so, we don't run from the negative. We acknowledge it and say, here's what we're going to do to fix it, and then we go fix it. And then once we go fix it, we report back that we fixed it. And I think that's a step that's often lost, is that a lot of times what happens, is we fix it, and we move on to the next thing.
Closing that loop of notifying the public is what helps in their mind build a trust is like, “Oh, you raised our rates. Oh, you said you were going to do this project. Oh, you built this project. Oh, you told us about you building this project, and I'm seeing the benefit.” That is a multi-year strategy. You don't do that in one year, you don't do that in one project, that's like a decade to transform from there. And we're five and a half years into it and I think it's going to be a decade.
So, I think it's that transparency and it's just letting the data guide, and then not running from the reality of it.
Mahesh Lunani (39:11):
So, it sounds like the approach you've taken in building the trust is acknowledge that's an issue. Tackle it head on, and we are going to solve this problem, and then communicate what you've been doing.
Pieter Van Ry (39:26):
Which is an industry we've never been really good at.
Mahesh Lunani (39:29):
Of course, yeah never.
Pieter Van Ry (39:31):
There are organizations that are really good at this, I would say, but industry as a whole, I think this is a challenge of ours.
Mahesh Lunani (39:37):
I agree. And that's what we're talking about, the 80% not the 20% that are on the leading edge of this. First of all, fascinating discussion, you move from New York to Colorado, consulting to public sector, stormwater to water and wastewater, really fixed the funding issues for the two entities. You've been taking leadership on, focused on this lead service removal, 30% of yours in the city water utility that you manage, really drive culture change.
A happy workforce is a more productive workforce, and create this great innovation concept, what I call open-source platform, PARC, to drive innovation, I believe is a great role model that you can replicate throughout the country. And your legacy as you stated it, you want to make sure you're just a blip as you exit. And the method of handling public trust, “Hey, let's tackle head on, let me communicate what I've been doing to solve your problems.”
This is a lot of work, but I admire you, Pieter, for what you're accomplishing. It's a lot of content you discuss, you got your hands full, what you're trying to accomplish and trying to be the best version of yourself every day to serve the communities you do. So, I want to thank you for taking the time.
Pieter Van Ry (40:58):
Well, thank you. And I think if you listen to all that, that's why I love my job. I mean, it really does get to all of that is why I love my job. And so, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today, Mahesh and your listeners.
I think anybody can feel free to reach out to me and we're happy to share anything that we're doing or that we've done, but I really just appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. I don't get a lot of opportunities to kind of go through the whole journey. Thank you for inviting me on in the conversation. I really appreciate it.
[Music Playing]
Mahesh Lunani (41:27):
Thank you so much, Pieter.
Pieter Van Ry (41:28):
Thank you.
Voiceover (41:29):
Join host and Aquasight founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani for another episode of 21st Century Water, produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.