Empowering the Next Generation: Addressing the Water Workforce Crisis

Ravi Kurani

As the water sector braces for a massive wave of retirements—often called the “silver tsunami”—and grapples with aging infrastructure and emerging contaminants, who will step in to manage our most critical resource? Enter a new generation of professionals: digital natives versed in AI and data, yet mindful of the irreplaceable value of skilled trades. How do these young voices view the future of water treatment, operations, and resilience planning?

In this episode of Liquid Assets, we sit down with Clara Hallgarth, an environmental engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who’s about to enter the workforce amid these seismic shifts. Clara shares her perspective on workforce shortages—30–50% of current operators are set to retire within a decade—, the vital role of on-the-job training for plant operators and maintenance technicians, and the promise and pitfalls of introducing digital technologies into critical water infrastructure

What You'll Hear in This Episode:

• The looming silver tsunami and its impact on the water workforce
• Challenges of aging infrastructure and the need for proactive climate resilience planning
• The crucial but under-appreciated role of operators and skilled trades in water treatment and maintenance
• How digital natives can leverage AI and SCADA systems to boost plant efficiency without sacrificing reliability
• The case for expanding trade education and apprenticeship programs alongside university pathways
• Clara’s journey from Cal Poly student to AWWA member and her vision for cross-utility collaboration

Listen On:

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Meet Clara Hallgarth

Clara is completing her Bachelor’s in environmental engineering—a blend of civil, chemical, and environmental disciplines—at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. With plans to pursue a combined M.S. in civil and environmental engineering, she’s deeply interested in water and wastewater treatment processes, wildlife biology’s impact on water quality, and the intersection of policy and infrastructure.
Active in the American Water Works Association (California-Nevada section), Clara has attended multiple conferences—Portland’s Water Infrastructure Summit, the Young Professional Summit in Sacramento, and the Cal-Nevada fall conference in Las Vegas—where she’s often one of the youngest attendees, advocating for strategies to attract more talent into operations and maintenance roles.

Through her studies and AWWA involvement, Clara is committed to ensuring that as seasoned professionals retire, the next generation is equipped not only with technical know-how but also with the practical, hands-on skills essential for keeping water flowing.

Transcript

00:00
Ravi Kurani
This episode of Liquid Assets is sponsored by HASA, the leader in water treatment solutions. HASA delivers eco friendly, reliable and cost effective water care and has been keeping communities safe one drop at a time. They've been at it for more than 60 years. And you can learn more about HASA by visiting hasa.com that's hasa.com welcome to Liquid Assets Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the intersection of policy, management and business all as it looks at the world of water today. We have probably one of the youngest guests that we've had on the podcast. We have Clara Hallgarth who's reining in from California. She goes to Cal Poly SLO San Luis Obispo for those of you non Californians that don't know. And yeah, Clara, how are you doing today? 

00:50
Clara Hallgarth
I'm doing excellent. Thank you so much for having me. 

00:53
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, thank you. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. I know we on this podcast have had older people. I don't want to call them old, but you are again older. Yeah, by reference, the youngest person that we've had here. And I think it raises an interesting point because a lot of the folks that I've talked to in the water industry are like, there's this silver tsunami coming out. We're going to have a draining in terms of supply of people that can actually do the work. Let's just kind of get your viewpoint on that from somebody that still in college about to enter the water workforce. What are like your bullet points there? What do you think? 

01:33
Clara Hallgarth
Well, I definitely agree. I actually when you mentioned the silver tsunami, I kind of looked into it more and Awwa had done like a state of water report a couple years ago and I think it was somewhere between like 30 to 50% of the water workforce is due for retirement in the next 10 years. So there's like the generational issue, right. Which is just that it happens to be a lot of people are up for retirement around now and there's also is compounded by like the 2008 recession. So people didn't retire and now they are. And then it also more so in the water workforce people just tend to be older. So it's a pretty major issue because it is like it's a vital component of society. Right. We need to have access to water. It needs to be high quality water. 

02:20
Clara Hallgarth
So it's definitely something that I've noticed people are concerned about and it's something that's emphasized to me a lot as like potentially a future Water professional, like, that is a field I'm interested in joining in. 

02:31
Ravi Kurani
And so from somebody that's entering the workforce very soon, as a newer generation that's coming into the workforce, let's just take a step back because I've. We've had a lot of viewpoints on the podcast around climate resilience, around the kind of future that we're building around breaking infrastructure. Right. A lot of this stuff was built on 300 years ago. What are your thoughts with all of that, with just somebody that's actually coming inheriting these problems? 

03:03
Clara Hallgarth
I guess my concern lies that, like, we know we have these issues coming up right now. We have aging infrastructure. We know climate change is already happening. Right. So hopefully these people are not just, like, leaving the problems to us. Hopefully they're working on addressing them now. And then we'll continue that work. Right. Because, like, as a future professional, I'm not going to have the work experience to, like, address these issues as well as these people who are close to retiring age will. But I guess my concern lies that we know we have all these. These issues facing us and there's going to be more that's unknown. You know, like, we can't expect. We don't know what's going to happen in 10 years in, like, the water sector. Right. Like, even PFAs. Right. Like, we just added regulation for that this year. 

03:49
Clara Hallgarth
And it's like, people were kind of expecting that, but I feel like we're going to have more emerging contaminants. I feel like there are just going to be other issues arising. Right. That. I guess my concern is that we just. We can't. We don't know what we don't know. Right. And we can't expect everything that's going to happen. So a little. A little stressed out. I'm a little stressed out about that in, like, a very existential kind of way. 

04:18
Ravi Kurani
Sure, sure. Let's dig into kind of what you're. What you're studying. A lot of the audience on the podcast is outside of the water industry. The, the point of this is, the point of this podcast is not to be a podcast for water industry people, but more of educating the rest of the world of how we use our water. What are the issues with water? Because like you said, it is a. Is a necessity for life. Like, everybody knows that. And with that kind of in mind, what are you studying and what do you want to go into after you graduate? 

04:57
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah, I'm studying environmental engineering at Calpoli in environmental Engineering. It's technically a subset of civil engineering, I would call it, but it's also kind of like a combination of chemical engineering. It's pretty broad. At Cal Poly, so we do like air quality stuff. We do a little bit of noise and vibration, but there is definitely a water focus and like a wastewater treatment focus. And for me personally, I do want to pursue my master's, so my plan is to do they have like a blended program where you can double count some of the units. So my plan is to get my master's in civil and environmental engineering there. 

05:31
Ravi Kurani
Got it. And then after you go into the workforce, what vertical do you want to go into? 

05:38
Clara Hallgarth
That's a good question. I know I want to do something watcher related, but as to what that is exactly, I'm still not sure. I enjoy, like, water treatment stuff. It's interesting to me, but I think honestly, I'm probably just gonna get whatever job I can get that's like in a convenient location because I want to stay by my family and then just kind of see where stuff goes. Because I think I'm the type of person where like, I can't really. I can see the job description and I can see the listing and I can be like, oh, like that sounds okay, but you don't know if you like a job till you do it right. So for me, like, all of these topics are interesting to me, like water infrastructure, water treatment processes. 

06:22
Clara Hallgarth
I really like the intersection of like wildlife biology and how that impacts water quality and vice versa. So still big question mark. 

06:37
Ravi Kurani
And if you were to maybe look at the inverse of that on where do you see that they're like forgetting actually your trajectory and what you're going to do after? Where do you see there being the largest gaps in, you know, in reading this AWWA paper or just even kind of what you topically know from what you're studying in. In the water world, My answer is. 

07:03
Clara Hallgarth
More geared towards like California, because that's more of the issues I'm aware of. Anything to do with climate resilience, really, Drought planning, floodplain planning. Just as we get more extreme weather events, we can't deal with them afterwards. Right. We have to have plans to deal with them in advance and ideally have the infrastructure set up so that it's not as much of an issue in the first place. So that's a major one, I think, in the engineering world. And then as for water more generally as a whole, operations and maintenance for treatment is a huge field that's kind of struggling right now because there are just too many people retiring and not enough people. 

07:40
Clara Hallgarth
I don't know if it's like lack of interest, lack of incentive, or just lack of knowledge about it as like a job opportunity, but that's definitely a sector where we need more people to join. 

07:55
Ravi Kurani
And when you say operations and maintenance in water treatment, can you kind of bring that to the layperson? Like, what does that mean? Is that, is that wastewater? Is that just across the board? Is that understanding how to measure and treat water between food and beverage to kind of the exhaust? Like what is, what does that mean? 

08:11
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah, so generally there's water treatment for like drinking water. Right. And then there's wastewater treatment. And they're like two parts of the same system. And for both of those, you need to have operators who run the treatment plants. And there's like a series level, some operators who, they're like, they're going out, they're checking on each parts of the plan. They're like physically fixing stuff, they're reporting back, they're doing like basic laboratory stuff. Other operators are checking on plants, have like they run on scada. It's like surveillance something. I don't remember what it stands for, but they're the people who run the plant. So it's a pretty major thing. And the same for maintenance, right? 

08:50
Clara Hallgarth
You need electricians, you need just general technicians, you need people who have like the mechanical know how of fixing all the pumps and pipes and everything that makes a water treatment plant work. So as of right now, it is a skilled trade, right. I think the main issue is that you need, it's just a lot of on the job training. You don't necessarily like your education won't help you get that job per se. So I think it's just like to get into that job and to support people in that job, you really need to push for that training and you really need to push to open that opportunity to people who might not, you might not think are suited towards it. You know what I mean? Because otherwise you won't have the people to fill the position. 

09:36
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. I think you raise an interesting point around skilled trade. I feel like in a lot of the conversations that I've had, the US in particular, right. If we're talking about that as an example, has lost a lot of the skill trade because I think for the last maybe 20, 30 years, 20 years, let's say we focused very highly on kind of a collegiate or university based education, which, you know, by the way, is not bad. But we're also losing out a large part of the workforce which are around the skilled trade standpoint. From somebody that is coming into the workforce. Are you seeing your younger colleagues going into skilled trades or is that still a problem? 

10:18
Clara Hallgarth
I think it's definitely still a problem. Honestly. I have like, I have family in the trades. Like my family. I have a lot of plumbers in my family who went to trade schools for that and are like part of the plumbers unions now. But personally, among people my age, I don't know anybody who went to a trade school. I think there's definitely an overemphasis on getting a college education. Even when maybe like, you're personally not suited towards it's not a good time for you to pursue that or just it doesn't really make sense for the type of lifestyle that you want to have. Right. Like, I went to college because I got into a good school. 

10:58
Clara Hallgarth
I got like scholarships and tuition aides because coming from military family, like, we have financial support from that and because I kind of knew what I wanted to do. And I love education. Like, I love being educated. But like, if you don't enjoy that, I don't really see why someone should pursue college. I don't feel like it's the equalizer that it once was. You know what I mean? I think at some point in time, college used to be a way for people to kind of like, get up to a higher standard of living. And I don't really think that's true anymore. 

11:29
Ravi Kurani
And if you had a magic wand to wave, how would you fix that problem for. For your college or maybe even like a generation younger than you? Right. Maybe. Maybe the ship has already sailed for your folk because you guys are going through college and are about to enter the workforce. But how do you change that? 

11:47
Clara Hallgarth
That's a big question. I think in the first place, I do wish that schools would kind of make trade schools or just like jobs that don't require a college degree, like, spread awareness about those more so, you know what I mean? Because I think, like, I remember as a senior in high school, we'd go to like seminars about like, oh, this is how you do college applications and this is how you do whatever. Whatever. I don't think, like, trade schools wasn't even mentioned. Right. Like, the only reason I knew about it is because I have family in it. But it wasn't an option, you know, so unless you're aware of it, you're not going to. You can't do something if you don't know what it is. I think that's the major issue, honestly. 

12:32
Clara Hallgarth
And then I don't know if magic wand can fix all of it really, because I think that stems back to like American education systems in like before college as well. I think awareness is probably the major one. And just people knowing that, it's not like I feel like people think you have to get a college degree, otherwise you're just working like a dead end job. And that's not true. That's never been true. But it's especially not true now with skilled trades. 

12:59
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I love that so much. And it brings back this idea of the apprentice program that we used to have, you know, back in too, between the, you know, early 1900s. And it doesn't seem like that's really advertised or marketed as much as it should be. 

13:17
Clara Hallgarth
I. I don't think it is. Yeah, definitely. I know like in there's a carpenter's apprentice program, actually Cal Poly advertised like a carpenter's apprentice program. And there's like a couple schools across California that have like apprenticeship programs. Because like in the trades you have to. A part of getting your education is working like just on the job training. Right. But I think it kind of goes back to like specialized jobs. Right. Being in the trades, it is skilled labor because it's a really specialized job. So you need to have that apprenticeship because it's not, you can't just read about it. Right. I can do math about like setting up a treatment system and like checking all the chemistry equations and whatever, and I can design it that way. And that's fine for me as an engineer. 

14:05
Clara Hallgarth
But the operator and people working on maintenance, they need to actually physically know how to fix it. So them learning about that from a textbook doesn't work. 

14:15
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, there's this dichotomy that's been talked about on the podcast. A few times of water being such a critical infrastructure, a livelihood. Right. A need for us as humans, you know, and it being something that's really not privy to adopting technology quicker because it is this very kind of. It should be a slower moving thing for somebody that's obviously a digital native. How do you feel about that? I think a big part of this whole silver tsunami is much of the workforce didn't grow up in a digitally native world. And with you coming in kind of implementing these technologies, do you one feel like that's going to augment the shortage of supply that we have and people that we need? 

15:06
Ravi Kurani
And then secondarily, what do you think that does on the con side, because I've also heard if you implement technology too quickly, you could end up with failure states that might hurt our critical infrastructure. 

15:16
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah, I see both sides as well. I definitely think in terms of efficiency, that's where technology can really be of assistance. I don't really think for most jobs relating to water, I don't think it can replace a person, you know what I mean? But it can make stuff run more efficiently. And I think that's where it should be implemented. Right. Or even like AI, for example. Right. If you can have AI with your SCADA system for your treatment plant. So I guess layman's terms, like if you have artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence tracking, like, the pressures and the chemical compositions of each, like, component in your treatment plant, it can idealize and it can, like, help you make your plant more efficient. Right. Because it's no longer a person looking at that stuff. It's. It's technology. Right. 

16:11
Clara Hallgarth
So I think that's one section that could definitely be improved upon, but I don't think it would replace a person. Right. Like, can't. That's still a person's job. And I, I think especially for water, we don't want to leave it up for potential technological failures because it is such a critical, like, critical infrastructure. Right. And I understand too, like, the reluctance to. To add in new technology because there is the fear that, like, we don't want to impact our quality or impact access because it is so important. Right. But at some point, it's kind of like a train wreck. Right. Like, if everything's going crazy around you have to adapt at some point. Right. Like, there's only so much mitigation you can do. I feel like we put it off for so long. 

17:03
Clara Hallgarth
The more we put it off, the worse our infrastructure is and then the harder it's going to be to transition later. So I think it needs to be added in at some point and hopefully it can be a slow adjustment so we maintain high quality water and make sure there's no, like, issues. But I think it's definitely coming. 

17:25
Ravi Kurani
I want to take a bit of a left turn. You said you are a part of a military family. I want to dig a little bit deeper into kind of what makes Clara. Clara. I feel like I want to use this as a spotlight to one tell your story, but secondarily, if there's other folks out there that are interested in joining the water industry, that want to get into the water workforce, let's kind of shine a light on that. Like, why did you. First question, why did you choose to go into water? 

17:59
Clara Hallgarth
Let's think. Well, I initially came to Cal Poly. So Cal Poly, you have to be declared in your first year, right? Which isn't the case at all colleges. So I came in as math, like a math major. But I don't really think that means much because again, like, I just had to pick something to apply. And when I was like, really evaluating what do I actually want to spend the next four or more years of my life studying? Environmental engineering was a big draw for me just because it. I really liked. It's like simultaneously kind of broad and very niche because it's the intersection of all these life sciences, right? You do a little bit of biology with, like, we do microbiology, you do a lot of chemistry, you do phys, you do fluid dynamics, you do like the general engineering principles. 

18:44
Clara Hallgarth
And I like it too, because for me personally, it feels like an area where I can really be helpful to people. You know, Like, I'm not a huge people person, so I can't ever see myself, like, working in healthcare or like, working in any sort of, like, caregiving position. But I want to work a job that I feel like is beneficial to society. So environmental engineering was like, it seemed like a good major where I could get an education that would support whatever position I'd buy in the future that does that. 

19:16
Ravi Kurani
And what made that inflection point of you picking environmental engineering for, like, why. Why did you choose environmental engineering as the impactful thing? 

19:33
Clara Hallgarth
Well, to be completely honest, I hadn't looked at the math flowchart till I got into Cal Poly. Like, I didn't know what I would be studying until I was already accepted. I just like math a lot in high school, so I was like, oh, I'll go for math, right? And then, like, I enjoy engineering stuff. I like problem solving. So I, I knew I had wanted to do something engineering focused. And on Cal Poly, they have, I think, I mean, all colleges have this, but you can kind of like click and you can go to like, you can look at the flowchart, which, like, has all the courses you're supposed to take each quarter in a certain major. 

20:04
Clara Hallgarth
So I just compared all the engineering ones and I looked at the class list and I was like, environmental engineering seems like it gives a broad basis in science. It gives a general engineering basis as well. And then I think water was definitely even back then already of interest to me because even though, like, I've been overseas, I have grown up primarily in California, and it's always been, like, on the back of my mind, you know, like, just how important it is to us as a state and as people in general. 

20:39
Ravi Kurani
Where. Where did you live previously? Where. Where you. You kind of were exposed to water as well? 

20:44
Clara Hallgarth
Well, I lived in Germany for my last three years of high school. Were stationed over there. So it was definitely. It was a weird transition because I had been in the Bay Area for, like, six years before that. So it felt very strange to, like, be in an area where, like, water usage was no longer a concern and where, like, the landscape was different. Everything just felt really different because of water. So it was a big contrast coming back to California for college and, like, kind of putting it, having that realization of how much water can impact just the world around you. 

21:22
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, entirely. And that's really interesting. You make that comparison between Germany and California. You're also involved in awwa. Let's talk a little bit about that. Like, if you were somebody that was trying to get into the workforce, what opportunities have you tapped into? And let's just do a quick spectrum of what's out there. 

21:45
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah. So I love awa. So that's the American Waterworks association, and I'm part of the California Nevada section. It's basically just like a giant water nonprofit, but they're pretty major in water because they publish a lot of reports. They have, like, Opflow is their journal with, like, new technology for operators. And they have a ton of committees that do different research and stuff as well. So they have a big impact on water as a whole. So for me, as a student, I got involved. We have a. We have a chapter at Cal Poly. Student chapter. I got involved in my second year. Yeah. Yeah. Because just after Covid, and it was just super interesting to me. So I think for anyone interested in joining the water industry, AWWA is definitely the place to go. 

22:33
Clara Hallgarth
Even just checking at the webpage, they have, like, potential careers if you have the chance to go to a conference. Everyone I've ever met at a conference has been so nice and so welcoming and friendly and encouraging, and it just, like, great opportunities to learn about what's going on in the water industry, as well as making connections that could potentially get you a job in the future. 

22:56
Ravi Kurani
When you were going through the conference, was there a particular through line that you noticed in the conversations that you had or an interesting handful of bullet points that kind of bubbled up? 

23:09
Clara Hallgarth
I think. Well, I. I've been to a couple conferences, so I went to, like, a water infrastructure one in Portland. I went to the young Professional Summit in Sacramento this year. And then I just came back recently from the California Nevada sections fall conference in Vegas. And I think the big theme, honestly, at all of them was like, we've been mentioning throughout this whole podcast, young professionals and like the emerging generation of the next water force. Right. So that's definitely coming up with everyone I'm talking to. Right. Cause I am usually one of the youngest people there. So that. And then of course, climate change and aging infrastructure, which are all like, it's just the same topic points at every conference, but they're huge issues, so I understand why. 

23:55
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. And it's amazing because young professionals care about climate and aging infrastructure. So like, I feel like you have the makings of, you know, like a billion dollar startup here. If you like, if you could take a bunch of young professionals that are obviously cognizant of the environment and a climate and then come up with a really interesting way to figure out how to like fix the infrastructure. Be that through sensor systems, through augmentation with artificial intelligence, through like, help supplementing the younger workforce and like doing their job. I think you have, I think you have an interesting idea. 

24:38
Clara Hallgarth
It would be a great startup. Ooh, I should put it out. We have like an entrepreneurship thing at Cal Poly, like a, an elevator pitch thing with a thousand dollar prize. Yeah, that could be a cool one. 

24:51
Ravi Kurani
Let's explore that a little bit. So what would that look like? You are, you are the hypothetical CEO of the young water professionals that care about climate and want to fix aging infrastructure. Working. Working title here. 

25:05
Clara Hallgarth
Okay. 

25:07
Ravi Kurani
What does the model look like? What do you fix and how do you fix it? 

25:13
Clara Hallgarth
That's a big question. So we're in California, right? 

25:16
Ravi Kurani
Yes, let's start off in California. It's California. The riches, which is our niches. 

25:21
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah, Yeah. I don't think I can speak to anywhere besides California. I think one thing that we should really focus on, and maybe this theoretical company could do it as well, is just more collaboration between different water utilities. Because I feel like one of the major issues that we have with the way that infrastructure, like water infrastructure is addressed is that it's really segmented. Right. Because each water utility has like their zone of like where they get their water from and like whatever watershed they aren't even delineated by. Watershed is kind of the issue. Right. So like you have a portion of a creek that you're responsible for and then someone else has a portion of that creek and someone else Has a portion of another, like part of that creek. And the same for like pipelines, right. 

26:13
Clara Hallgarth
Because we have infrastructure throughout the state and some of it's state owned, some of it's like county owned, some of it's like privately owned. So it's just really. It's a big jumbled mess. So I think one thing that this theoretical company could really work to address is just being like the middleman between all these different sectors to improve collaboration, improve planning so we can actually get what, like they're not individual issues, right? Like if you have an issue in one portion of the creek, it's going to affect another portion of the creek and it needs to be addressed collectively. So I think that could definitely be a major focus and probably something that actually it's a really good idea. I should, I should. That'd be a good pitch. 

26:57
Ravi Kurani
It's actually interesting you say that too, because I had this conversation just the other day with somebody on the pod. She was actually in policy and she had mentioned that policy is actually the root of a lot of the usage and infrastructure issues. Because unlike energy and telecom, like in California, let's take energy, for example, there's two major providers, right? There's Pacific Gas and Electric up in the Bay Area, and then there's SoCal Edison, I think is what it's called down in Southern California, plus a bunch of few regional players. And with energy and the fact that it's generally decentralized with the way that you can do things with solar and wind, water really just doesn't have that advantage because it's generated either on surface or in groundwater. 

27:46
Ravi Kurani
And then depending on kind of how deep you can drill, you can basically get access to what you want. And then if you don't use it, you lose it. With that kind of said, it would be really interesting in your hypothetical model where you almost create like an intra district, right? You have your districts and then there's this umbrella that actually maps the true boundaries and almost puts a little lightweight dotted line around the jurisdictions that should be. Should be there. Reminds me of actually a Craigslist example. They said Craigslist sometimes has better like quote unquote gerrymandering or not gerrymandering, but like district boundaries than does politicians. Because the way that people buy things is very telling of kind of their. There's just general socioeconomic status and where they should be and that's like how they should actually vote. 

28:40
Ravi Kurani
And somebody, I think once proposed we should just have Craigslist actually put our voting down fees instead of. Yeah, really interesting idea. What else, what else would you do? 

28:52
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah, well, actually briefly I do want to mention, are you familiar with ceqa? The. I don't remember what it stands for, but it's basically like it's the new groundwater. We're starting to regulate groundwater in California, which is a pretty major deal. 

29:09
Ravi Kurani
The Surface Groundwater Management Act. 

29:13
Clara Hallgarth
Yes. Sigma, yes. Oh, maybe I'm saying the same. Not ceqa is the environmental one. But basically the way I really like how they did it because the way that they kind of split up the little sections is that they're not like strictly by groundwater zone, but it's no longer split by county. Like they're splitting them up in terms of regulation more so by where the water is actually coming from, like the groundwater. So I really like going towards that maybe in the future in terms of policy. That's how we're headed to for like regulating surface water. Because like as you're saying, right, like water is water. It's, it's all part of one cycle. So you can't pretend that what you do upstream is not going to affect what happens downstream. But anyways, back to your question, which was what else? Climate resilience projects. 

30:08
Clara Hallgarth
I feel like that's like kind of a cop out answer, but it's true. 

30:12
Ravi Kurani
Let's, let's dig into that. What is, what is one tactical climate resilience project you could do in California? 

30:18
Clara Hallgarth
In California? Well, I'm in the bay right now for Thanksgiving because I'm visiting family. So I'm thinking just in the bay. Sea level rise. So flood prevention. Right. Which could be, it could be flood walls, it could be dredging, it could be like physically building up the land that you're in. It could be a huge variety of things. And I guess if my theoretical company had like theoretical endless funds, we could address that whole issue. But of course, like in reality it's like I think someone was telling me like some estimate was over a billion dollars or something for like fixing all this in the Bay Area. But yeah, just preventative projects so that we're no longer like dealing with the after effects of storms. Right. 

31:15
Clara Hallgarth
Our infrastructure is made so that we don't have to repair or we have to do less repair and we have to do less mitigation and that it's designed to deal with these extremes that are happening and are going to continue in the future. 

31:32
Ravi Kurani
We had an episode earlier with AEM Advanced environmental Monitoring. And they have a really interesting business model around pairing with insurance companies. That's where you get your funding from. Because insurance companies have to pay for the damage every time floods happen. And if you can mitigate that. I think you have an endless pot of money from the insurance companies. 

31:54
Clara Hallgarth
Yeah, that actually, that sounds really interesting. I'm not sure. I don't know how, like, flood insurance works. That would be interesting, though, because I feel like, at least for fire, which isn't quite as related, but I know, like, a lot of fireplaces won't insure if they know your house is going to get burnt down. You know what I mean? Like, if you're in an area with a high risk of wildfire, they won't give you fire insurance. So I feel like modeling with insurance companies could definitely be like an area to look into. But if they know you're going to flood, I'm not sure if they give you insurance in the first place unless. 

32:31
Ravi Kurani
You could prevent it and you make an area more livable. 

32:33
Clara Hallgarth
That's true. Yeah. 

32:35
Ravi Kurani
Cool. I ask everybody this question as a final closing, and it's. Do you have a book, a movie, or, like a TV show that has one maybe changed your outlook on the way that you view the world or changed the way that you view the world of water? 

32:53
Clara Hallgarth
That's a big question. I think the only books I've read, honestly, in the last couple years have been textbooks. So I think that's kind of out what was a good movie I watched recently, actually, I'll go TV show. And this is also kind of like, this ages me. Or I guess maybe like, de ages me. But Avatar the Last Airbender, if you know the show. Yeah, it just like, it's a kid's show and I did watch it as a kid, but I was watching it recently. It doesn't, like, deal with, like, climate change or even explicitly with, like, water infrastructure, any of this stuff, but in terms of, like, separate people working together to overcome the odds, you know what I mean? Which I think is kind of what we're at with each water utility, each, like, district, each county, each state, each nation. 

33:49
Clara Hallgarth
Our water is global, right? Like, our water resources are global. And we're going to have to overcome all these issues in the future and now really to deal with what's going to be happening. So I really like Avatar because it's just kind of an inspiring story of overcoming these boundaries to solve stuff. 

34:10
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Love it. Yeah, we'll definitely have to throw it up on the show notes when we publish this episode. 

34:15
Clara Hallgarth
It is a kids show, though. 

34:18
Ravi Kurani
Clara, thank you so much for coming on the pod. For all of those of you out there, you can listen to Liquid Assets wherever you get your podcast. Be that on Spotify, Apple, Google. We're also on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Clara, thanks a ton for coming on the pod today. 

34:34
Clara Hallgarth
Thank you. I appreciate it.