Moderator:
Doane Liu, Deputy Executive Director and Chief of Staff, Port of Los Angeles
Speakers:
Adel Hagekhalil, Assistant Director, City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation
Nancy Sutley, Chief Sustainability and Economic Development Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Randy Truby, Comptroller, International Desalination Association
Felicia Marcus, Board Chair, California State Water Resources Control Board
Gordon Johnson, Chief Engineer, Metropolitan Water District
Mark Gold, Acting Director, UCLA Institute for the Environment and Sustainability
Marty Adams, Water Systems Manager, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Guillaume Clairet, Executive Vice President, H20 Innovations
Jack Baylis, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Baylis Group
Due to extreme drought conditions, the just completed 2013-2014 rain season was the seventh driest year in Los Angeles since recordkeeping began in 1877. The drought has led our City to increase use of imported water to over 80 percent of consumption. Imported water is costly. Furthermore, our imported water supply is at an immediate and long term risk due to the impacts of global warming, which are reducing the Sierra snowpack, the key water supplier for much of California. Los Angeles could face extreme hardship in the event of an earthquake that severs the aqueducts that deliver water here. Reducing imported water use is of critical importance to Los Angeles. In November 2014, Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive directive to implement an integrated water strategy that increases local water supplies, improves water security in the context of climate change and seismic vulnerability, reduces per capita potable water use by 20 percent by 2017, and reduces purchase of imported potable water by 50 percent by 2024. This panel will discuss the tools and methods to achieve the Mayor’s directive and reduce Los Angeles’s reliance on imported water.