Southern California’s largest water provider has elected a new general manager, but the decision isn’t final, and the hotly fought vote is revealing deep divisions inside the powerful agency as the area suffers from a severe drought.
The Metropolitan Water District’s board of directors chose Adel Hagekhalil to run the agency this month, according to The New York Times, replacing longstanding CEO Jeff Kightlinger, who is retiring. Hagekhalil is the head of L.A.’s Bureau of Street Services and was formerly the city’s sanitation department’s second-in-command.
After 15 years under Kightlinger’s guidance, Metropolitan is at a crossroads. The organization transports massive volumes of water from the Colorado River and Northern California, and it takes pleasure in negotiating complicated agreements to safeguard the region’s water rights and investments. However, as the earth warms, such far-flung resources become less reliable.
In Los Angeles, Hagekhalil has been instrumental in Mayor Eric Garcetti’s efforts to reduce dependency on imported water by recycling sewage and catching rainfall before it reaches the ocean. His appointment might signal at least a partial change in Metropolitan’s direction, as well as a new beginning for an organization that has been shaken by sexual harassment charges.
However, the agency’s board must vote again before officially offering him a contract — and Hagekhalil’s supporters are concerned that Kightlinger or board members who chose another candidate may attempt to sabotage his candidacy.
According to many persons acquainted with the behind-the-scenes battle, some directors who backed Hagekhalil have received calls from their colleagues wondering if he is indeed the best option.
After the vote, the agency’s human resources director sent a note to the board referring to Hagekhalil only as the “leading candidate,” indicating he still needed to go through a background check, a review of his references, and a salary negotiation before an offer could be made.
Detractors consider Hagekhalil as too inexperienced in Western water politics to run an agency whose work makes life possible in Southern California, particularly as climate change causes greater temperatures, more evaporation, and less snowpack.
They’ve banded together in support of Pat Mulroy, a renowned figure in the Colorado River Basin. Mulroy, who led the Southern Nevada Water Authority for more than 20 years, helped the Las Vegas Valley develop significantly despite restricted water rights by pushing extreme conservation and striking a hard bargain with neighboring states and the federal government.
She also advocated for a 300-mile pipeline to rural eastern Nevada, which would have allowed Las Vegas to tap into remote groundwater reserves — the kind of sprawling water supply infrastructure that was built across the West in the twentieth century, but which many environmentalists see as a waste of money. The project was eventually abandoned.
She received 18 votes to Hagekhalil’s 16. However, under the agency’s weighted voting method, in which bigger towns and water districts have a greater influence, Hagekhalil received a 50.4 percent majority against Mulroy’s 46.8 percent.
On May 8, the vote was held in a non-public “private session,” as authorized by state law for employment decisions. Following that, an agency official said that the board made a pick for general manager and given guidance on contract negotiation.
Both of the top vote-getters, as well as Kightlinger, refused to speak for this article.
The Metropolitan Water District is a relatively unknown entity in Southern California. However, it is vital to the lives and livelihoods of approximately 19 million people in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura.
The 1,800-employee organization runs the 242-mile Colorado River aqueduct, a narrow blue strip across the desert that provides water to sinks, showerheads, swimming pools, and golf courses, from its 12-story headquarters next to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
It is a major participant in state politics, purchasing most of the water pushed south from Northern California rivers and vigorously advocating for a contentious $16 billion tunnel near the Bay Area that would help keep that water flowing.
Los Angeles is one of Metropolitan’s major customers, receiving half of its water from the agency on average in recent years. The Los Angeles Aqueduct also transports water from the Owens Valley and Mono Basins to the city.
However, the city of Los Angeles intends to create additional water via recycling and stormwater collection, as well as utilize that supply more effectively. Garcetti has established a target of obtaining 70% of the city’s water locally by 2035, which includes cleaning and reusing 100% of the city’s wastewater.
Supporters of Hagekhalil said they anticipate him to be a major supporter of such initiatives.
Metropolitan has begun to go in that direction under Kightlinger, paying Southern California residents to pull up their lawns and collaborating with Los Angeles County on plans to create one of the world’s biggest sewage treatment plants.
The organization also supports the planned “Delta Conveyance Project” underneath the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Kightlinger has maintained that the enormous tunnel is required to keep water flowing south since environmental regulations restrict pumping.
Opponents argue that it would be environmentally disastrous and a costly diversion from sustainable local supply.
Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, said he favors Hagekhalil because Metropolitan needs a fresh look at what a water agency is in this century, and how it functions differently than it has in the past when the emphasis was on bringing on supply.
According to him, the primary concerns are changing as per-person water usage decreases owing to conservation, biodiversity protection becomes more critical, and climate change exacerbates the swings between drought and flood.
Garcetti appointed five of Metropolitan’s 38 board members, more than any of the agency’s 25 other cities and water districts. All five voted for Hagekhalil, and it wasn’t only Garcetti supporters that backed him. Board members from Fullerton, Glendale, Long Beach, San Diego County, San Fernando, Santa Ana, and Santa Monica also voted for him.
Mulroy’s supporters were mostly from Orange County and the Inland Empire, with some support coming from water suppliers in the San Gabriel Valley, Ventura County, Compton, Pasadena, and Torrance.
Metropolitan Chairwoman Gloria Gray, who represents the West Basin Municipal Water District in Los Angeles County, was her most prominent backer.
Mulroy is seen by supporters as considerably more experienced than Hagekhalil in the hard-fought struggles that are only becoming more difficult as climate change depletes the Colorado River and the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which feeds California’s main rivers and reservoirs.
Between 2000 and 2014, she supervised a 45 percent decrease in per-person water usage in Southern Nevada and made many arrangements to preserve water for dry periods, including returning treated wastewater to Lake Mead, which can then be collected later.
Mulroy’s expertise could be especially useful as the seven states that rely on the Colorado River prepare to renegotiate their century-old water-sharing agreement ahead of a 2026 deadline, and as the amount of water that can be sent south from California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers is limited by environmental rules designed to protect salmon and other struggling fish.
Mulroy has previously worked for Metropolitan since leaving her position in Nevada.
According to contracts published by the media, she counseled for the agency on federal policy, climate change, endangered species, and other topics from March 2016 to February 2021.
Kightlinger’s office authorized the contracts for her consulting business, which was paid $10,000 each month.
Skeptics have also expressed concerns regarding lawsuits filed against L.A.’s sanitation bureau during Hagekhalil’s tenure there.
One of the sexual harassment lawsuits resulted in a multimillion-dollar jury judgment but did not identify or identify Hagekhalil.
Another action, filed last year, says Hagekhalil and other municipal officials retaliated against him for testifying in the previous complaint and accuses Hagekhalil especially of “systematic anti-Chicano racial promotional practices and policies.”
An L.A. deputy city attorney wrote in a note distributed to the Metropolitan board two days after they voted for Hagekhalil that the retaliation suit “does not identify any interactions between the plaintiff and [Hagekhalil] whatsoever, much less any interactions that could be perceived as legally cognizable harassment,” and that the city intends to try to have the case dismissed.
The Service Employees International Union’s Local 721, which represents over 10,000 municipal employees, wrote to the water agency board, calling Hagekhalil an “exemplary leader” who has “worked to build a culture of inclusion, respect, and fairness.”
Southern California is expected to withstand a few dry years, due in part to the Metropolitan Water District storing record quantities of water in reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Diamond Valley Lake, as well as subterranean aquifers.
These reserves were made feasible by the agency’s various supplies from around the West, as well as its rising conservation initiatives.
Even if Los Angeles and other areas are very effective at recycling sewage water and reducing thirsty green lawns, they will still be largely reliant on imported water for many years to come.
Similarly, even the most ardent supporters of conventional water infrastructure projects recognize that conservation, recycling, and stormwater capture are critical to the region’s future.
It’s only a matter of how much can be done and how quickly.