In our latest episode of the 21st Century Water Podcast, we had the privilege of engaging with Shivaji Deshmukh, General Manager of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. Shivaji, a veteran in the field with over two decades of experience in sustainable water solutions, sheds light on the evolution and challenges of Southern California's water systems, emphasizing the importance of innovative practices in water management.
We kicked off the conversation with Shivaji sharing his top three significant professional experiences: the development of the groundwater replenishment system in Orange County, pioneering work at the West Basin Municipal Water District on recycled water and desalination projects, and his current role at the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, focusing on comprehensive recycling and groundwater replenishment initiatives.
Shivaji elaborated on the complexities of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency's operations, including wastewater treatment, recycled water programs, and advanced water quality testing. The agency's commitment to innovation is highlighted through its involvement in various projects, such as the RP-5 expansion, which integrates membrane bioreactor technology for enhanced water treatment efficiency.
Addressing risks, Shivaji underscored the challenges of water supply reliability and workforce development. He introduced the Chino Basin Program, a forward-thinking project aimed at augmenting water supply reliability through advanced recycled water treatment and groundwater storage, showcasing the agency's proactive approach to addressing water scarcity and promoting sustainability.
The discussion transitioned to the role of technology in water management, with Shivaji expressing enthusiasm for advancements in control systems, SCADA, and artificial intelligence, while also acknowledging the critical importance of cybersecurity in protecting water infrastructure.
Shivaji's vision for a circular economy in water management was evident as he detailed the agency's initiatives in composting, energy generation, and recycling. His leadership is driven by a commitment to sustainability, community education, and leveraging innovative solutions to meet the region's water needs.
Concluding the episode, Shivaji reflected on his legacy and aspirations for the water sector, emphasizing the importance of leaving a positive impact through collaborative efforts and innovative projects. His dedication to improving water management practices exemplifies the spirit of the 21st Century Water Podcast's mission to inspire and inform about the advancements and challenges in the water industry.
Inland Empire Utilities Agency and more on Shivaji: https://www.ieua.org/leadership/senior-leadership/
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
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. In today's episode of the 21st Century Water Podcast, I'm honored to host Shivaji Deshmuhk, General Manager of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency.
Shivaji brings over two decades of expertise in developing sustainable water solutions, serving approximately a million residents in Southern California. His work, in particularly advancing groundwater systems and promoting recycled water is exemplary.
Shivaji's academic and professional journey, include achievements at both the Orange County and Western Basin municipal water districts, coupled with its leadership at IEUA. He's shown a relentless pursuit for driving efficiency and sustainability in water management with degrees in civil engineering from UCLA and specializing in reverse osmosis, he brings cutting edge solutions to this sector.
This episode promises to explore Shivaji's contributions not only to the water sector, but focusing on how his leadership is exemplifying the activities in Southern California. I want to welcome Shivaji to a discussion on shaping the future of America's water system in the 21st Century.
Shivaji Deshmukh (01:52):
Thank you, Mahesh. It's really nice to be here. Looking forward to chatting today.
Mahesh Lunani (01:55):
Real pleasure. I want to get right into it. You've been in Southern California most of your life, when it comes to water, what are the top three significant events you have experienced in your professional life or otherwise?
Shivaji Deshmukh (02:11):
Thanks. That's a great question and one that actually overlaps with my career and the fact that I've gotten the opportunity to work at three separate agencies. All of these agencies, I think, really personify local supply development and the concept of one water, nothing more so than where I work currently.
But I think if I had to categorize the three different projects or programs or actually events, I'd start out with the first project I had an opportunity to work on about 25 years ago, and that's the groundwater replenishment system in Orange County, California.
Today, it's a project that recycles 130 million gallons per day of wastewater that normally gets discharged out into the Pacific Ocean.
When I started at Orange County Water District in the late 90s, I had just graduated and as you had mentioned, focused my studies on reverse osmosis membrane. And that technology was so instrumental in allowing us to take wastewater, which was once considered a waste and turn it into potable supply.
Early in my career, I got an opportunity to work on the planning, the design, the construction, and ultimately the operation. And before I left in 2010, I got to set the stage for working our way to get to that 130-million gallons per day number. But it was such an amazing opportunity to be part of a big team that delivered this project.
What was also exciting about it is it really built off the success that Orange County Water District had from the 1970s where they were the first agency to actually apply reverse osmosis treatment to wastewater. By the way, reverse osmosis, the technology invented at UCLA, so Southern California really has a great experience with that.
Definitely one of the highlights of my career in 2010, got to serve as the assistant general manager for another very progressive agency named West Basin Municipal Water District, located in coastal Los Angeles County.
And what made West Basin a really unique agency is that they wanted to be on the forefront of looking at new supplies. A very unique recycled water program that really met the demands and the unique needs of that region. And that resulted in what was referred to as designer waters.
So, whether it was the traditional purple pipe system for irrigation of agriculture, golf courses, medians, or tailor treated water for the industries and the refineries around there, it created or it allowed us to create a very unique way of delivering recycled water.
But we also felt as an agency that it was our responsibility to look at the ocean as a potential supply. And it was a very important part of my career because while we determined, ultimately after I left, the agency determined that it wasn't a path that wanted to take, really got the experience to see what goes into evaluating a new supply for a region.
And what we found is there were ways to mitigate environmental impacts, but ultimately, whether it was public acceptance, or the energy demands that were associated with this new demand, there were policy decisions made at that time for that region that ocean desalination wasn't the preferred way to go for that agency.
So, for me, it was almost in contrast to the success of the recycling project I had an opportunity to work on. The start of my career, it was how do you evaluate these projects? And really, it's all about where and when you build a project and whether or not the public's going to accept it.
In regards to the third, I'd definitely say it's this opportunity I've had to be the general manager here at Inland Empire Utilities Agency. This is an agency that arguably does more than any other agency that I know of in California where a water district, first and foremost, our agency through a contract, collects and treats wastewater from seven major cities and agencies within our service area.
In addition to that, a hundred percent of the liquids that come through our wastewater plant are recycled as well as the solids, hope to talk about that a little more. But we really embody the one water concept here where we're looking at maximizing the resources we have. So, I would describe those three as my top three experiences throughout my career.
Mahesh Lunani (06:43):
It's actually quite phenomenal. The very thing you studied is what you've implemented in your first major professional milestone, and then you went after desalination and understood the pros and cons of what it takes to actually not able to implement and then bring all of that knowledge to Inland Empire in terms of recycling. So, it is quite phenomenal.
I mean, you are … and I'm going to talk about this, in a way, you are a circular economy leader. We'll discuss more about this.
You talked about Inland Empire, it's a very complex system, and I studied prior to getting onto this podcast, it wasn't easy for somebody to fully understand every aspect from drinking water, what you do from pass through to recycling water, the groundwater, recharge basins, what you send through your purple pipes, et cetera. Can you describe your complex systems, the assets, the infrastructure, and the people behind it?
Shivaji Deshmukh (07:39):
Sure. I think it's helpful to just describe our agency a little more detail and I think that sets the stage for what our infrastructure and assets look like. As I mentioned before, we are a water district. We were formed under an act from over a century ago at the state level. And we were formed in 1950.
Essentially, our job then was to bring imported water to our customers at that time. And the way we would do that was being part of a larger water district. Actually, the largest water district in the nation, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
We are now one of 26 member agencies, happen to be the only one located in San Bernardino County. But our job was essentially to serve as the representative for this area to get that imported water, specifically state water project from our state aqueduct system to our local retail customers here.
Our board and our agency had a lot of foresight. So, when the Clean Water Act passed in the early 1970s, we were already well positioned to look at wastewater as a potential supply for us. In addition, we actually overlay a very large groundwater basin.
And while that's not under our responsibility or jurisdiction, we've established long-term partnerships with the management of that basin. So, all that being said in the early 1970s through a contract, we partnered with now seven agencies to collect and treat their wastewater.
And even at that time, we recognized that the water coming out of our treatment plans was good enough to reuse again and also recharge into the groundwater basin. We also, as the one large regional agency, partnered with a lot of our local retailers to look at certain projects and assist them in either the development or the continued operation of it.
So, I bring that all up just to describe some of the assets that we either have and operate or that through contract or agreement that we're involved in. So, starting with our wastewater collection system, we have over 270 miles of wastewater, recycled water and brine or non-reclaimable pipelines all throughout our area, roughly about 250 square miles.
We operate five major wastewater treatment plants. Currently, only one of them has both solids and liquids, and the four others either have one or the other. That's changing as we're working on our largest construction project to date.
In addition to that, we deliver a hundred percent of our digested solids to a partnership that we operate with LA County Sanitation districts, where the two agencies come together in our service area, and we operate the largest indoor composter in the nation.
We basically turned an old IKEA warehouse into one of the biggest HVAC projects ever where our digested solids go in. After two weeks of processing and mixing with amendment, it turns into a very high-quality compost that we sell not only within our region, but around southern California.
In addition to that, we also have a relatively new advanced water quality laboratory, about 17,000 square feet of lab that allows us to keep in compliance with our regional board permit and also helps support our groundwater recharge program.
Because when this tertiary treated water reenters our groundwater system, it does turn into a very important portable supply for the region. And so, you can imagine that there's a lot of testing that's required to support that permit.
In addition to that, a few other unique facilities that we operate, we actually operate through a contract desalter, which maintains hydraulic control at the low end of our groundwater basin. And while we had a significant amount of agricultural activity over the past century, this desalter helps clean up that groundwater and turn it into drinking water. So, we serve as the operator for that.
Finally, as an agency that's there to not only protect public health, but also to protect the environment, we operate a number of wetlands just south of the treatment plant in the headquarters where I'm sitting at.
That not only show how natural systems can help further treat water, but it's a great educational asset that we have where we outreach to our elementary school kids to teach them the importance of what we do here at IUA.
Mahesh Lunani (12:13):
I used the right word complex because you got desalter treatment plants, wetlands, you have a composting facility, and then also transferring this drinking water of Metropolitan Water District and the state aqueduct to your communities. So, it's a combination of so many things that you have to run.
So, every agency like yours operates based on an O&M budget and a capital budget, there's just a classic definition. What's this look like for the next two years and where are you making the biggest investments in the next five years?
Shivaji Deshmukh (12:50):
We, like many agencies of our size, are looking at very large capital improvement programs. Our systems are 50-years-old, we're still in an area and actually one of the unique areas in southern California that's still developing. San Bernardino and Riverside Counties continue to grow.
We see a lot of migration from the west part of southern California over to where we are. And on top of that Inland Empire Utilities Agency and where we're located, which I call the four corners of the counties Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and LA- it's a very important physical location in terms of logistic hubs, warehousing and a very nice place to live.
All of that leads into a strong investment and need for funds for these projects to handle not only the development, but also the rehabilitation and refurbishment of our existing systems. Our annual budget that we're looking at for the next fiscal year that'll start in a few months, is about a half a billion dollars.
More precisely it's $476 million for the next fiscal year. And roughly half of that is our capital investment. And half of that is our operation maintenance, mostly focused on the wastewater treatment plant or the wastewater collection and treatment system, which consists of a number of treatment plans.
Right now, the bulk of our capital improvement program is focused on the RP-5 expansion. I had mentioned how some of our plants have just solids, some have just liquids. RP-5 is soon going to be one of our largest and most complex plants where one of our solids treatments facilities is actually in the floodplain of a major flood control dam and we need to move that out.
In addition, we need to update the technology and prepare ourselves for the development that's still taking place in the south and east part of our service area. So, the RP-5 construction's about two thirds done. It's a $330 million contract just for the construction portion of it.
It's allowing us to expand not only our liquid treatment but also move that solids treatment over from another facility that will soon be in a place that it could be flooded. What's also exciting about the project is that we are, for the first-time, employing membrane bioreactors as a treatment technology.
We're very excited to take advantage of those efficiencies and the improvement in water quality because like I mentioned before, every drop that comes out of our treatment plants is recycled and will be used again, whether by us through our own non-potable or potable systems, or it's discharged to the river where our downstream partners will end up capturing that water.
So, right now, we're expected to wrap up construction in about a year and a half. We offer tours of this facility, so if any of your listeners are ever out here in southern California, we welcome everybody. But it's a really exciting project for us and we're looking forward to the completion of that soon.
Mahesh Lunani (16:01):
It's quite phenomenal, and you are running a half a billion-dollar business of public money and comes with great responsibility and that too on a product line that has direct impact on public health and environment.
So, and that actually leads to my next question, what are the top risks that you manage? Because as CEO and I am for a tech company, I always think about risks. It's inherent that you want to minimize. In your case, what are the risks you manage and how are you doing it?
Shivaji Deshmukh (16:34):
The risks actually that we have I would describe them as two major ones. One is water supply reliability. As an agency that has a large amount of scope, we feel like we've got everything covered when it comes to capturing and collecting and treating our community sewage.
But what we are very challenged with in southern California is water supply reliability. And I want to talk a little bit about a project that not only meets the needs of our wastewater treatment and water quality, but also helps us from a water supply standpoint. And I'll talk about that in a bit.
Another challenge for us, and we're definitely not unique in this nor is southern California, is workforce development and training and preparing the next generation of experts to not simply design our treatment plants and we need engineers, but those who are going to operate it and plan around a modern wastewater management. That's part of the One Water concept.
And to me, it's a very exciting part of our business is how do we reach out to this group? But I do think it is a profession that has gone under the radar for way too long. And the more we can as an agency or as an industry get the word out the better it is for our communities.
Mahesh, I did want to go back to the risks you asked about and the water supply reliability risk. One of the things that I'm very proud of this organization and it was part of the ethic well before I got here, was the forward planning.
I've got a running joke with my colleagues here. When I started it was, wow, we do a lot of planning here. We have so many different versions of master plans, and now I understand why, and I can see the benefit of it.
In the 2015 timeframe, we as a region got together and said, “Hey, what do we need to do in order to increase the reliability for water supply in the region?” We knew we had a groundwater basin. We knew we were able to successfully use recycled water, but we also saw some constraints.
We still relied on imported water for one third of our drinking water supply, and that water comes straight from the California aqueduct. And if there's a drought in the state like we had three years ago, that has a direct impact on us.
So, we looked at what we needed. We did a lot of great planning, and then the voters almost 10 years ago voted for Proposition One, which resulted in over $2 billion in funding available for water supply projects that could also benefit the environment.
Well, because of our forward thinking and our good planning, we were well prepared to go after that funding. In 2019, we were awarded conditional funding of now $215 million to develop a project that was basically a combination of a water recycling project and a groundwater storage program.
And the state said, “Well, if you're able to produce a new supply of water, which would reduce the demand on imported water from Northern California, and you could store it and use it when we needed you to use it, then there'd be a financial incentive for us to offset the capital.”
So, that's what really set the stage for what we call the Chino Basin Program. It's 15,000-acre feet, it's a water volume term we use out in the west, an old agricultural term, also roughly 15 million gallons per day of new advanced treated recycled water. That means going through reverse osmosis and then being replenished into the ground that could be used for our customers to use in the opposite of a rainy day.
So, we're really looking forward to developing this project and this partnership out with the state. We haven't done any construction yet. We've probably spent about $10 million evaluating this program, and we hope that whether this calendar or next year, we're able to determine if this is the way we want to move forward.
If not, if we don't partner with the state, we still see such a great value in producing more recycled water. So, that's one other risk that's out there. And this is a solution that's going to definitely impact our capital improvement program, but also can help address those water supply risks that we have.
Mahesh Lunani (20:52):
So, this Chino Basin Program is in addition to groundwater basins replenishment you do today, is that right?
Shivaji Deshmukh (21:00):
That’s correct. So, right now we produce this high-quality tertiary water, and all that recycled water goes one of three places. It either goes to our non-potable purple pipe system which we deliver to our water retailers, and they then deliver to their customers, typically golf courses, large turf or even agriculture and dairy, which we still have within our region.
But for about 20 years, we've been operating a groundwater recharge program in the north part of our service area where we send this water up, it's big open basins with sandy bottoms where just by gravity, the water settles into our groundwater basin.
And as long as we have the correct distance between an extraction well, that water is ready to go for potable consumption. Because this area has developed so much over the past few decades, finding that additional land for those recharge basins is challenging.
So, as we further treat the water to address the new regulations, the new constituents of concern we're seeing in the water, it also allows us to use replenishment wells to get the water into the ground rather than these large area basins. So, it's really the next step in evolution of how to get recycled water into the ground.
Mahesh Lunani (22:20):
What is amazing to me, having come from a Fortune 500 background, most Fortune 500 CEOs think in terms of what's in it for the next quarter, what's in it for this year?
But leaders like yourself, and I've not been in your shoe in terms of agency leadership, think about what's here for the next decade, what's here for the next generation? And that's a totally different mindset when you have those sorts of timeframes you're dealing with. So, I commend you to be able to even think in those terms.
I don't think (any) of our Fortune 500 CEOs can think like that, but what resonates to me, and as I was researching really in depth prior to this conversation, circular economy is such a big component of your business.
I mean, just to give examples, you’re making high quality compost. You talked about taking over an IKEA warehouse, you're generating electrical energy, you are recycling wastewater. It's fair to say, in many words, and I call this, you are a circular economy leader, and it is the future for sure.
Can you describe to the audience that want to be one or want to move in that direction, what does it take to drive circular economy in this sector? And more importantly, what does your ideal blueprint look like? And you've been doing this for 25 years now.
Shivaji Deshmukh (23:48):
Yeah, I really enjoy talking about this because it does start with having local elected leaders who run these unique agencies, and I'm talking specifically in California here. It requires a lot of bold decisions and a lot of foresight, and we can develop all the projects and unique programs that we want, but without the leadership of these local elected (officials), you're not able to move these projects forward.
What I think has worked really well, and I'm very proud of in southern California, is a watershed-based approach to looking at these challenges. And while our agencies and their boundaries and our jurisdictions don't necessarily fall along the geology or the watersheds, we do try to make the best of it. And while it doesn't come easy, I think that's helped result in these very unique and worthwhile solutions.
I'm just thinking about the history that we have at Inland Empire Utilities Agency, and like I had mentioned before, around the time of the Clean Water Act in the early 70s, there was already this mindset that we can't just send this water out to the river and then out to the ocean, and it requires a lot of investment as well.
And so, I think the way to make a circular economy, or a concept work is a combination of that bold leadership, but also outreach and education. What we find is our communities across the board support this concept.
And we find as a public entity who does have to think out 50 years, especially on the wastewater side, has to plan for that ultimate development, that it's important to do that now because there's that adage, you decide to do something later, it's going to cost 10 times as much. So, balancing that fiscal responsibility and not burdening our future generations with unnecessary costs has resulted in projects like this.
A little bit unique things about our agency that allow us to do this. I do feel as a special district with directly elected leaders, I have five bosses who are directly elected by the public. So, in a sense, that's who I'm working for, represented by those five allows us that flexibility to move projects like this forward.
Even though we have, I think a significant size budget, I wouldn't describe us as a very large agency like some of our partners out to the west in Orange and Los Angeles County, but we do take advantage of economies of scale. Whether that's with wastewater, recycled water, water supply projects, and we've taken advantage of that with the composter, with our recycled water program.
But one area that we still don't see yet an efficiency to go to a hundred percent is our recycling of gas. So, that's something that we want to keep on our radar and work towards in the next few decades, is how do we in an efficient manner, make sure that we capture and harness as much of that energy as we can.
And one of the challenges though, ultimately is with the products that we develop as a public entity, some don't have the matching demand. So, for example, with recycled water, the demand is not always there when we have the water. Thankfully, we have a groundwater basin that allows us to store that water and utilize it.
But we see that challenge with composting too. Right now, we're composting a hundred percent of our compost, but if there were more solids, we would have to try to figure out where that demand is and is it relatively local so that we could address that.
Mahesh Lunani (27:30):
You talked about political will and leadership. I mean, perhaps part of this is unique in southern California is the success of Mulholland, what he did 150 years ago and how that has come to really create southern California as we know it.
And maybe that's continues to be play out as I think about recycling, as I think about big programs like the one you're trying to do. So, there's maybe a success that's just breeding more success in this space.
Shivaji Deshmukh (28:01):
Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Again, an opportunity to talk about what we've done here in southern California, and it really replicates a new trend that is — I shouldn't say a new trend, it represents an old practice, with an updated approach. The early 20th century in California resulted in amazing projects. Two thirds of the people now live in the south, two thirds of the rain falls in the north.
So, between Mulholland building the LA Aqueduct in the early part of the 20th century, the federal government building the Central Valley project, bringing water from the true northern California to the Central Valley, which is the bread basket of the nation, to Metropolitan Water District building the Colorado River Aqueduct in the late 1930s, all finalizing with the former Governor Brown building the California Aqueduct in the 1960s.
Four major projects, manmade rivers that were built by four separate entities to bring water to the people, those projects were all about movement of water. And the last two, three decades in Southern California have been really focused on rather than moving that water, treating that water, and keeping it local and reusing it a number of times.
And so, we talk a lot about the audacity of these projects back then. And I think we're replicating that with very innovative projects today that have just a different style. And I think we need to keep that momentum up.
Fortunately, for us, especially in California, we've got a strong support for water recycling. The challenge now is that easy projects have been done. The water that we're trying to recycle is getting harder and harder to treat and harder to move to where those demands are.
Mahesh Lunani (29:46):
Right. Such as a pure water program in San Diego for example. So, I want to talk about technology. What do you think is the role of the technology in the water sector and what are you most excited about?
Shivaji Deshmukh (29:57):
Technology is key. One of the shocking things, and now I'm just so impressed by it when I started it, Inland Empire, was the fact that we don't have 24/7 operations here.
And while initially that concerned me, I quickly got over it because I saw the level of investment we made in technology specifically control systems and SCADA where we can operate our systems 10 hours a day and keep them unmanned or unstaffed in the evenings because of our investment in that program.
We also are in an area that is, I mentioned a large groundwater basin, and we're right on the slopes of a very large mountain range. So, when it does rain, we have a significant amount of runoff and ultimately infiltration. And we've been dealing with that lately and what has saved us is technology.
Our partnership with Smart Cover and advanced monitoring has really helped us prevent sanitary sewer overflows.
So, we've invested early on in that, we don't want to be on the cutting edge of technology, we want to use tried and true methods. We believe in process optimization, but we also believe with partnering with the private side and research institutions to know what's coming up.
So, we're very excited about that. We're also excited about artificial intelligence. We're all so new in understanding what it can do for us. We always joke that there's the more commercial and conventional ways of having it right reports to, but what our information technology folks are reminding us is that it's being used and supporting us today in many ways that extend beyond administrative, but also operational.
But the last I'll close with technology is a concern we all need to have as an industry is cybersecurity. Our systems tend to be air gapped but that's getting harder and harder nowadays. And so, we've got a strong commitment and like many things well before I got here to making sure our systems are safe from cybersecurity threats.
And I really appreciate what we as an industry have done to focus on that and to make sure our policymakers know that that's a priority.
Mahesh Lunani (32:18):
No doubt, the control systems has to be totally separated in this space. As we start to wrap up, a few more questions. You talked about optimization, and we didn't discuss asset management, but these two topics from the research I've done is pretty important for Inland Empire. Can you describe what your strategies and tactics are?
Shivaji Deshmukh (32:38):
I'll skip over what I think are the more routine aspects of asset management, but the leadership here, we very much prioritize an asset management approach. We're sitting on a billion dollars of infrastructure here. We don't believe in running these facilities to the ground and buying new. We want to maximize the useful life of these facilities.
And so, what we're seeing with our optimization and asset management approach is a blend of tried-and-true practice with some innovation as well.
And so, one of the things that we've been focused on is because we've got a, what I call a centralized, decentralized system where we've got four plants that are highly connected. I guess I should say decentralized, centralized system, want to make sure that there's a consistency in the assets that we use, that they communicate really well together.
And ultimately what we are looking at is ways that we can even improve that through artificial intelligence. And so, that's something that we've tasked our management team and our operations team, asset management team and operations team to look at.
They know that we're looking at life cycles of 25 to 50 years and their challenge to make these pieces of equipment last that long. And we're also kind of taking the constraints off them to use some unconventional approaches. So, I'm really excited to see what the teams can produce on this.
Mahesh Lunani (34:07):
Excellent, excellent, and great vision on that space. This is a question I always ask. I mean, you are fairly young, I don't know your age, but sure you look really young, but you've accomplished so much already, what do you want your legacy to be?
Shivaji Deshmukh (34:21):
I guess before I answer that question, I'm always grateful for the luck I've had in the opportunities I've been given. And they say luck favors the prepared. I believe in that a bit, but I just have been so fortunate to work at three amazing organizations and so many unique projects.
I love being connected to the concept of recycling, whether that's recycled water, composting or just the idea of reuse. And I think for our generation this is something we've all had to learn. I'm grateful that younger generations have seemed to, and hopefully have that built into their ethic.
But what I'm really looking for at any place that I get to work is to just leave it better than I found it. I've really enjoyed working on these projects. I don't necessarily feel I have that vision to create these concepts, but I really enjoy executing and trying to deliver something.
So, for me, it's a combination of that and really focusing on the people. We have an ability to get things done in many different ways, and I would much rather do it in a way that minimizes impact, a negative impact on people rather than building people up and working with a big team to solve some pretty wild challenges. And so, I would say I just want my legacy to be, I leave a place better than when I started at it.
Mahesh Lunani (35:49):
I mean, listening to you, the gratitude and humbleness is a gift and you certainly have it, Shivaji, and how thankful you are for all the opportunities that come your way.
So, as I conclude, you're managing a billion-dollar infrastructure, half a billion dollars in expenses, a million residents you're serving, got a phenomenal ride in terms of recycling water, wastewater, and you created a great new vision that you're executing along with your team.
I enjoyed it. I learned so much out of this discussion. I want to thank you for your time, and I really appreciate that. We'll connect again soon.
[Music Playing]
Shivaji Deshmukh (36:26):
Thank you, Mahesh.
Voiceover (36:26):
Join host and Aquasight Founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani for another episode of 21st Century Water. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or Stitcher, produced by JAG in Detroit Podcasts.