Fun Fire Hydrants and Wanted: New Director 

We were able to contribute to our nation’s 250^th anniversary last month by painting fire hydrants in patriotic colors along Foothill Boulevard and Honolulu Avenue in partnership with Girl Scout Troops 06791, 7141, 2904 and 14111, Glendale Fire Dept. (stations 21 and 29), and the Montrose Shopping Park Association. The 250^th is an apropos milestone to reflect on our democracy. This is more specifically a representative democracy, a system in which citizens elect leaders to make policies on their behalf based on the leaders’ experience and the time to learn about and understand complex issues.

Kerry and Danette Erickson have invested their time and care in multiple capacities for decades in the community. One area of service for Kerry Erickson is Crescenta Valley Water District. Kerry, who I refer to as Director Erickson (he is one of five elected directors who shape the agency vision that I am hired to carry out), was first elected to the District’s board in 2009 and has served as board president and on all committees. He brought 44 years of engineering and management experience related to space exploration at NASA/JPL and applied it to some of his priorities for the community, including fiscal responsibility and efficiency in project implementation. 

Kerry has decided to spend more time with his family and will not be running for re-election in November. He has been an exemplary steward of a life-giving resource for the community, insisting on prudent expenditures and lending critical thinking and analysis to impactful decisions, such as approaches to complex regulations or how rate structures are designed to be as balanced as possible. We thank him for his dedicated service and wish him and Danette many happy days with their grandchildren.

One of those decisions was not only to catch up on pipeline replacement but to develop an innovative in-house replacement system to stretch your dollars. The in-house replacement program saves 40%-60% compared to the contractors water agencies traditionally use. And with plans to replace 3.6% of our community’s 96 miles of pipeline this year, we are indeed catching up. At our current replacement rate, we are on track to replace the entire system within 27 years – well within the pipe’s 75-year useful life. 

I regularly share how this program is going but the major water main breaks in West Hollywood that many saw in the news in the last several weeks are a stark reminder of how infrastructure installed from the 1920s to the 1960s across the land is overdue for replacement. That’s why pipeline replacement jobs this fiscal year (ending June 30, 2027) on streets such as Montrose Avenue, Foothill Boulevard, and Henrietta Avenue are so important. Pipeline jobs are expensive, messy, noisy and difficult. But your local agency is doing it significantly more economically than anybody else – and the work is necessary to make sure that homes are served, businesses thrive and we are ready for emergency situations.

Innovative approaches like in-house pipeline “make the pizza bigger” so to speak. We can do more with less and this is a hallmark of fiscal responsibility, which is so important in an era when affordability is a top concern. 

Another way to grow the pizza is to lean on technology. Just as the wheel, the horse, the Industrial Revolution, the computer and the internet expanded the production possibilities frontier during their respective eras, today’s emerging technologies can help us do more with less. For example, we are piloting various cutting-edge technologies to detect underground leaks, assess infrastructure more accurately to determine its remaining useful life and optimize energy costs by matching demand with variable energy output. We can’t wait to update you on the results and which ones will ultimately be implemented to increase service reliability while controlling rate increases. 

Our next office hours, which we hold about quarterly, is on Sept. 30 at the Montrose Library, 2465 Honolulu Ave.

Thank you as always for reading and continuing the dialogue. 

James Lee, General Manager
Crescenta Valley Water District