New SCAP President
The new leader of Southern California Association of Publically Owned Treatment Works (SCAP) is LABS member Enrique Zaldivar, PE, Director of the Bureau of Sanitation for the City of Los Angeles.
A Message from the Executive Director…
I hope everyone had a safe and pleasurable Fourth of July. As I celebrated our nation’s birthday it caused me to reflect on how our country became so great. Without a doubt it has been our leaders that have contributed to the successwe have achieved over the last 200 years. Individuals such as, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to name a few. Men that had exceptional wisdom and foresight and were not afraid of challenges. And much in the same way with SCAP, it is certain individuals who have helped mold our organization into what it is today. From its inception back in 1992, SCAP has been blessed with outstanding individuals serving as president, beginning with Charles (Chuck) Carry (LACSD), Kamil Azoury, (Goleta Sanitary District), Blake Anderson (OCSD) and Jim Stahl (LACSD). All of these gentlemen are great leaders and well respected within our industry. They all shared a common goal in which the members of our organization could provide assistance to each other without regard to size or locality. And as I have mentioned in the past, none of this would have taken place without the dedicated efforts of my distinguished predecessor and Executive Director Emeritus, Ray Miller, who continues to expound, ”it’s a people world”. And in the case of our SCAP organization, he couldn’t be more correct! SCAP is made up of individuals, who unselfishly give of themselves for the good of the membership. Beginning with our board members and including our committee chairs, co-chairs and members, it is the individuals who make up our SCAP family. With the start of a new fiscal year comes new leadership at the top, as SCAP’s President, Richard Atwater, steps down from his post and hands the reigns over to the newly appointed President, Enrique Zaldivar, of the City of Los Angeles’ Bureau of Sanitation.
Before I tell you all about our new President, I wish to personally thank Rich for his 9 years serving on the SCAP Board, the last 3 of which were as president. Rich’s accomplishments, both at SCAP and in the public and private sectors are far too numerous to recount in detail, however, I thought it important to list some of the following highlights of his illustrious career that has spanned over 35 years. Believe it or not, Rich wasn’t always IEUA’s General Manager/CEO. Having earned a BS degree in Geology and Environmental Science at Stanford University, he went on to receive his Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Southern California, even going so far as to win the prestigious Gordon Whitnall Award for Outstanding Student of his class.
After college, he had a cup of coffee with the CA Coastal Commission, working on the Energy Element of the Coastal Plan and then moved on to the City of Lakewood as a staff planner working on the General Plan update and code enforcement issues. He spent a couple of years working with Parsons Engineering-Science on various water resource projects in California, Nevada and Utah. He even worked for a couple years as Manager of a seven county Council of Governments, that included Las Vegas, developing community infrastructure plans in response to the proposed MX Missile Project planned for the Great Basin. As time went on, however, he began gravitating towards positions that would allow him to influence water policy decisions.
For the next 4 years, he worked for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation eventually being assigned to the position of Special Assistant to the Commissioner, which brought with it responsibility for managing the Washington D.C office with its 200 plus staff. Much of his time, however, was spent filling in as “Acting Commissioner” overseeing the Bureau’s seven regional offices and 6,700 employees. Deciding that he had braved enough of the cold winters and humid summers, Rich moved back to Southern California, where he became the Manager of the Resources Division of the Metropolitan Water District. His accomplishments included working on the All American Canal legislation effort, negotiating the $300 million East Branch Enlargement Contract and winning MWD Board approval of the Seasonal Storage Service water rates. He also became intimately involved in the SWRCB Bay-Delta water rights hearings while working on a myriad of water and power contracts, including the Hoover, Parker-Davis federal contracts.
For the decade prior to accepting his position at IEUA, Rich found time to serve as General Manager of the West Basin Municipal Water District and Central Basin Municipal Water District, where he was instrumental in growing the two districts’ staff and implementing numerous contracts with the public and private sector, followed by a few years on the private side with the nationally recognized water resources management consulting firm of Brookman-Edmonston, where he was quickly promoted from senior vice president to president. All of this finally led to his appointment as General Manager/CEO of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, where he managed a staff of 325 employees that provided wholesale water and wastewater services with an annual operating budget of nearly $100 million and a capital improvement budget of $500 million. Under Rich’s leadership, IEUA successfully completed numerous water recycling, recharge and storage projects and was awarded state and federal grants totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. One of his proudest achievements was the construction of IEUA’s new administration building, which won the prestigious Governor’s Environmental and Economic Achievement Award for being the first LEED “Platinum” public building in California.
I could go on and on about his accomplishments, but suffice to say, Rich is very much deserving of the honors given to him over the years and I think I speak for everyone as we wish him the best of luck in all of his future endeavors. With all of that said, I now wish to welcome in another outstanding individual who exemplifies the tradition of leadership in office as SCAP President, Enrique Zaldivar, the Director of the Bureau of Sanitation for the City of Los Angeles.
Enrique is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of California with a graduate degree and post graduate work in Civil Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona. Enrique started his career with the City of Los Angeles in 1985, in the Bureau of Engineering where he worked as a design engineer on wastewater treatment plants and major sewer projects, including projects at the Terminal Island and Los Angeles-Glendale Water Reclamation plants and the $200M North Outfall Relief Sewer (NORS).
In 1990 he was promoted to the Bureau of Sanitation’s City Recycling Program, which at the time was in its formative stage. In time, Enrique and his project team made the City’s curbside recycling program one of the most successful in the nation. In 1997, Enrique was promoted to the operations side of the solid waste business, as Assistant Division Manager of the Collection Division. It was here where his passion grew for resource recovery and world-class service delivery in the solid resources environment by successfully meeting the challenge of serving more than 750,000 customers every week, and by managing close to 2 million annual tons of Solid Resources commodities through recycling, processing, composting, mulching, energy recovery or disposal.
In August of 2002, Enrique was appointed Assistant Director in charge of the Solid Resources Program; a program with an annual value of over $300 million. In this capacity, Enrique oversaw the work of over 1,100 employees in solid resources collection, landfill maintenance, facility construction and design, curbside and citywide recycling, private sector recycling coordination, program development and numerous other activities.
In August of 2006, Enrique was appointed to the position of Executive Officer, whose role was much like that of a Chief Operating Officer, with oversight across the Bureau, including the Clean Water, Watershed Protection and Solid Resources programs.
Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa appointed Enrique as Director of the Bureau of Sanitation in October 2007 and by a unanimous vote, the City Council confirmed his appointment. The Bureau of Sanitation has become one of the largest departments in the City, with nearly 3,000 employees and an annual value exceeding $1 billion.
Enrique is active in several professional and trade organizations; has coached little league baseball and other sports as well. He and his wife Brenda have two sons, Enrique and Alonzo, and a daughter, Carina Gabriella.
One of the greatest perks associated with my job is being able to work with outstanding individuals such as Enrique and I must say, he was one of the brightest and most professional gentleman I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and I am very much looking forward to working with him in the coming years.
Individually Yours,
John Pastore, Executive Director
