Page 157 - CSD - PUD 02 28 19

Rolfe Porter

Thursday, February 21, 2019
11:36 AM
1. What drives you to seek this position? Tell me a bit about what you know about the City and the
fit you see with your interests.
I'm interested in working for an organization that is open minded, interested in trying new ideas
and trying new technologies. The organization that I'm in doesn't seem to have those qualities. As
I was looking around for positions, the City of San Diego seems to have those interests. The City
seems to be progressive. It seems like a fit from afar.

2. Please describe your most recent position and day-to-day responsibilities.

Presently the Executive Director for the Niagara Falls Water Board- we run water for the
City of Niagara Falls. They have a wastewater plant and a physical chemical plant, potable
plant, we also deal with the complete sewer system and all of the things that are
associated with that. My day to day is to get all of that to work together. I spend a lot of
time working with people to get them educated with the appropriate skills that are
needed. Like many places, we have not spent a lot of time on sufficient planning. There
have been a number of people who have retired and we have new people coming in. We
have set up a leadership program to educate them, motivate them. It has been dealing
with the people to get them up to speed. Another big part of my job is dealing with a
consent order. In 2017, the Niagara Falls Water Board got in trouble with the New York
State Water Environment Protection - we dumped something into the river and the State
did not like it. We have been doing incredibly well at meeting all of the requirements that
they spelt out in the consent order. A lot of this was spelled out in 1977. The consent
order has us looking at new types of technology - what should we be using now. There is a
combination of getting the people who run the plant up to speed, documenting the
standard operating procedures. That has been a major part of my day to day life. The
water plant is in much better shape. It has a good guy who is running the plant so it is not
as incredible of a burden as th e wastewater plant. The biggest thing that has come in
because of the consent order we've gotten a lot of grants. The New York State gave us
$20m and we had to match that. We've got nine projects that are in the works. Another
part of the day is getting those consultant contracts together and clarifying what those
contracts are. That's another big part of my day. The other thing that we have come up
with, that I picked up by going to the American Water Works Association - they have an
asset management conference once a year. What I've been doing is asset managing the
capital program should have a number of features in them, you should identify the
problem, certify the staff so you know you're getting the right information. Coming up
with a way to document- that document should role into your process. If you look on my
resume, it talks about that - we bought a camera truck, were inspecting laterals, educated
the personnel so that what they see is standardized information, we put that into the GIS,
which has every one of the pipes numbered. So a part of my day is making sure that we
have the funding and can justify it. I have meetings about funding constantly - I'm always
dealing with the finances of the organization. I think that kind of covers most of it - getting