Aaron Kraft Email and Phone Number

Clean, affordable water is a strategic priority for every community. As the General Manager, I currently steward an annual $14M O&M budget and lead a team of 54 union and non-union staff through the highest quality water, wastewater, and utility billing customer service functions. Having championed $41M in water and wastewater capital improvements in Rialto over the last three years, I have enjoyed seeing the positive results and watching our team grow in the process.We are currently pursuing the National Association of Clean Water Agencies Peak Performance Awards with the goal of Platinum level performance. Water conservation is a key goal of ours. Having pioneered water conservation efforts by researching, planning, bidding, and reviewing various options for providing alternative solutions toward better water system accountability, these efforts have included lead detection technology implementation through a water meter replacement evaluation including AMR and AMI options. I routinely organize and facilitate critical public meetings with key community leaders regarding any and all things water, ensuring smooth, working community relationships. Through effective leadership we have been able to keep utility rates under control and still carry out best-in-class utility and customer service. I have the joy of working closely with community leaders to bring environmental education presentations and support to all levels of the public from fifth graders in the Rialto Unified School District to college-level students and stewardship organizations alike.

Nearly identical to current GM duties.

Wise project management saves money, stress, time, and resources and gleans key project learnings for future use in other endeavors. As a wise project manager, I facilitated wastewater capital improvements that included major headworks replacements, fluidized bed furnace and aeration basic upgrades, and two, 250 hp, high-speed air foil turbo blower replacements. In addition, I negotiated and secured four, multi-year, contract extensions with the City of Vancouver’s three wastewater facilities. These improvements and contracts were critical to area communities’ continued, stable, clean water-supply. There are significant media relations responsibilities surrounding area water-related issues. Having written public service announcements involving safety, compliance, major project ground breaking ceremonies, kickoffs, dedications, utility rate adjustments, emergency responses to water and wastewater infrastructure breaks, and the annual earthquake preparedness efforts and presented the to the news media, I have seen how thoughtful, and courteous community communications created public trust and promoted confidence in our team.

Leadership in the water/wastewater industry requires creativity, focus, and staying on top of the latest innovations. At AWE I developed preliminary design plans for the connection of two, custom-built, belt-filter presses that could not be used by another agency and package the improvements at a dramatically reduced cost to a client. Another interesting project was in New Orleans where a wastewater project was losing over $1M/year. It required major capital upgrades by the city in order to break even. I negotiated great pricing for equipment, securing other project equipment deals in return, and offered an annual energy savings plan, all of which turned the project to profitability after one year.Upgrades save money. At AWE I championed the upgrades of dozens of large pumps, motors and blowers with new, high- efficiency equipment saving clients hundreds of thousands in annual electric costs. Another money saving project involved partnering with a local engineering team to build a safety rail system along aeration basins along with clarifiers and chlorine contact chambers from recycled piping, saving the customer 40%.A very critical project it was an honor to steward was serving as the planning, design, construction, and operations administrator for a $64M regional wastewater design, bid, build, and operate project serving the tri-state area.

At Sioux City, I led 100+ multi-union employees with three direct reports for comprehensive, day-to-day, utility operations and customer/client care as well as the administration of nearly $100M in capital infrastructure improvements. A key project involved an 8,000’ 36” water transmission main installation whereby construction impacted hundreds of residents and businesses for well over a year.In addition, I oversaw an ESRI geographic information system implementation for all city utility needs, taking the city into the 21st century. The project was a four-year, interdepartmental, planning, proposal, bidding, and implementation effort. Outdated and missing underground utility information was digitized and uploaded from old paper plans, specs, and mylars. Trimble GPS units were used to collect geospatial coordinates representing hundreds of thousands of data points for more accountable asset management.In this role I serve as the lead spokesman for any and all water, wastewater, stormwater, solid waste, FEMA and Brownsfields-related city matters. I made tri-state area presentations to city councils, COGs, boards, non-profits, chambers of commerce, utility agencies, and conducted neighborhood meetings. Communications were often controversial due to flooding damage, service interruptions, property loss, rate increases, traffic disruptions, eminent domain cases, and lawsuits. I shared how the city was persevering infrastucture through these challenges and our plans to develop and implement solutions to these pressing issues.