Rain or Shine

Clifford Lum must figure out how to prevent the Board of Water Supply from having to tap all of Oahu’s available groundwater over the next 15 years

photo: Jimmy Forrest

After nine years as a principal with The Limtiaco Consulting Group Inc., a civil engineering firm, Clifford Lum made the leap to the Honolulu Board of Water Supply in January.

"It's a huge responsibility," says the 44-year-old Lum of his new job as chief engineer. "You have to take it to heart. You have to want to have some public service in your life and be willing to make the tough decisions to make water available."

One of those tough decisions is likely to be recommending that the Board approve a rate increase that could be implemented as early as October.

HB: What should businesses expect?
CL: I guess the best example would be similar to what the Department of Environmental Services tried to do. Instead of trying to hit everybody with a large rate increase, I think their numbers were something like 25 percent this year, followed by four or five years of 10 percent increases. We don't think ours is going to be that big, but we'd like to do the same thing and spread it out.

HB: What's been the biggest challenge transitioning to the public sector?
CL: It's a different business philosophy. I think coming over from the private sector, especially being a small business, I think we had the freedom amongst the principals to do pretty much whatever we wanted. And we could run the company the way we wanted. Here I think you are dealing with a lot of institutional knowledge and ingrained culture that, for better or for worse, is labeled as government. I think you have to get slightly beyond that to see the people for who they are and see that there's a tremendous number of great employees here who have good business sense. They just have to maybe look at it in a slightly different way and relate it to the business dollar and the business way of doing things. ÉThe biggest challenge coming down the road is a challenge that everyone is dealing with, and that's just the fact that our work force is aging and we need to find people to be in that succession plan, have the same kind of succession plan that The Limtiaco Consulting Group had, where I feel good about the people who are coming in and taking my place and are going to lead the company forward. As with any agency, you have a great deal of knowledge imbedded in your senior people. I don't think we have that succession plan in place yet and that's something that we really need to work on pretty quickly.

HB: In 2003, Hawaii Business reported that Oahu is expected to reach its water capacity Ð pumping nearly 98 percent of its available water supply Ð by the year 2020. Do you think this is still an accurate projection?
CL: That is in line with what our projections are to date. I think between now and 2020, we get to expand some of the programs that we're already doing now. Basically we look at it as resource diversification. Being able to do more things with nontraditional water supplies in order to enhance our existing potable water system, which is all groundwater based. These are programs like our district cooling program, basically using deep sea water to pump through cooling systemsÐthe same function that these companies do for air conditioning and use potable water, so instead of using potable water, we're using sea water that you can't drink anyway and conserving our drinking water supplies. I think we're expanding our systems. We're in the middle of negotiating with the Army to take on the Army water system, which will expand our base of operations at basically no cost to our ratepayers.

>> FAST FACT:

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply delivers about 150 million gallons of water a day to customers, from more than 130 water sources. Its distribution system includes more than 1,900 miles of pipeline and 160 reservoirs. Source: The Board of Water SupplyÕs 2005 Water Quality Report

HB: How are plans for the desalination plant coming along?
CL: Right now we look at it as, we need to fill that window and if desalination is something that we need to do in order to supply additional water, not only for that area, but system wide. We still consider desalination as a viable alternative. I think being on an island and being with limited groundwater, we have to consider everything, and for us to write off desalination I think is just irresponsible. So we will continue to look into it. I don't think we have to fast track the time frame where we have to get desalination tomorrow. Our planning group and our water resources group says that based on the 2020 time frame, we need to start something in earnest probably by 2011 or 2012 in order to have something online, so I think that's our planning horizon as well.

HB: Do you believe the Pearl Harbor aquifer is in crisis, since its sustainable yield has dipped from 225 million gallons a day in the mid-1970s to 165mgd?
CL: I don't think crisis is the right word. I think it bears watching and that's where we come into play as monitors of the system. We would probably like to take steps to lower that pumpage instead of having to pump at that high level all the time. We're looking at different programs that will allow us to reduce pumpage, whether it be bringing in additional water sources from west of Pearl Harbor and bringing them into the primary urban center where most of the water usage is done now.

HB: Is further privatization in the Honolulu Board of Water Supply's future?
CL: Whenever you talk about work efficiencies and performance and trying to do better, it's kind of getting too repetitious where everyone says you have to do it better, faster, cheaper. The fourth word that everyone talks about after that is privatization, and, in this case, I don't see it. I don't see how anyone else is going to be able to come in and operate the Board of Water Supply better than we can ourselves. I think it's a scare tactic that people always want to talk about, but I think if you put the programs in place and you allow your employees those same types of opportunities, then privatization goes out the window.

HB: Is there a message to the business community regarding the Board of Water Supply and Hawaii's water resources that you would like to send?
CL: I don't think you can ever stress conservation enough. I think the business community needs to know that the board of Water Supply is a business. There will be a rate increase, probably towards the end of this year, and it's all done for business reasons. We need to be able to maintain our existing infrastructure at a level that provides our rate payers a reliable source of water, and part of that infrastructure is getting the water to our customers. We can sit back and a great political line would be to say, "We're not going to raise rates." The fact of the matter is going to be that if we don't, we put the system in jeopardy and we may not be able to provide a safe, reliable drinking water source to all of our customers. So eventually we need to bite the bullet and this is the year to bite the bullet.

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