Richard Hajas on Water, Fire & the Future

Richard Hajas, chairman of the Casitas Municipal Water District, and a lifelong water industry veteran, has been through many drought-flood cycles in his life. Born in Ventura, he's lived in Ojai for 40 years, and is a former operations manager of two major water districts: Casitas Municipal Water District and Camrosa Water District in eastern Camarillo. He's built important projects, including the innovative Camrosa Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Conejo Creek Project, the largest water recycling project in the county. He's managed every aspect of watershed planning for both residential, prime farm land and rare wetlands. In 2007 he helped organize Ojai Flow, which brought to the ballot an initiative to wrest the sale of publicly traded Golden State Mutual Water Company to Casitas, a public entity answerable to voters. He's earned a B.A. and Master's in public administration from CSU-Northridge. He joins the podcast with good news and not-so-good news for listeners; the well-above average rains may bring Lake Casitas storage to nearly 75 percent capacity from below 30 percent after five long years of drought. Casitas has enough supply for many years with proper management and the looming threat of moving to onerous Stage IV drought restrictions was avoided. Richard leads a lively session with the history of water projects in America, the future of the state, and the trends and changes in Ojai's water use from farming to residential, and what that might mean for wildland fires and the next drought. We also talk about climate change, steelhead trout and eventually hooking up Ojai's closed system to the state water projects through either Santa Barbara or Ventura. We did not talk about Bill Mazeroski's heroic deeds for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series, the Blue Lagoon in Iceland or Khazak eagle hunters.