Out in the Community
As part of its standard to forge and maintain long-term, positive and proactive relationships with members of the local community and greater water industry and to be transparent about its operations and programs, OCWD board members and staff speak regularly before groups and at events. We recently participated in the following:
Directors Vicente Sarmiento, Denis Bilodeau, Kelly Rowe, and Jordan Brandman; General Manager Mike Markus and Legislative Affairs Liaison Alicia Dunkin met with Orange County Supervisor Doug Chaffee to provide a District briefing.- President Vicente Sarmiento and Directors Cathy Green and Kelly Rowe; Executive Director of Engineering John Kennedy and GWRS Project Manager Sandy Scott-Roberts met with United States Congressman Harley Rouda and provided a District briefing.
- California State Senator Bob Archuleta met with President Vicente Sarmiento and Directors Cathy Green, Kelly Rowe, Denis Bilodeau, Dina Nguyen, Jordan Brandman, and Roger Yoh; and Mike Markus for an OCWD briefing and GWRS tours.
- Directors Cathy Green, Tri Ta, Dina Nguyen, and Jordan Brandman; Mike Markus and Alicia Dunkin met with California
State Assemblyman Tyler Diep to provide a District briefing. - Director Stephen Sheldon and Mike Markus gave a presentation to the Newport Beach City Council about OCWD and the GWRS.
- Executive Director of Operations/GWRS Mehul Patel, GWRS Project Manager Sandy Scott-Roberts and Principal Scientist Jana Safarik presented at the AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference.
- The District hosted the regular bi-monthly meeting of the Orange County Chapter of WateReuse California with OCWD Executive Director of Water Quality & Technical Resources Jason Dadakis presiding as the group’s newly appointed president.
- Chief Hydrogeologist Roy Herndon participated in a panel discussion on career planning for geologists and engineers working in the water field. The workshop was organized by the Groundwater Resources Association’s Southern California branch.
- Roy Herndon also presented a talk on how OCWD is complying with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act at the Urban Water Institute conference in Palm Springs.
- Principal Engineer Ryan Bouley spoke about the GWRS at the 2nd Annual Energy Lunch & Learn in Irvine.
- Former R&D Postdoctoral Research Associate Shannon Roback presented at the 2019 IUVA World Congress Conference in Sydney, Australia on research completed at the District with R&D staff and collaborators from Stanford University. The title of the presentation was “Comparison of UV/hydrogen peroxide, UV/free chlorine and UV/monochloramine for the removal of NDMA and NDMA precursors