FALL ISSUE / 1998

DWR Director David N. Kennedy has announced that he will retire at the end of this year. Director Kennedy spoke with DWR News about some of his perceptions after 15 years at DWR’s helm. A companion article by Anita Garcia-Fante, Chief of the Office of Water Education, highlights DWR activities during Mr. Kennedy’s tenure as Director.

A Special Profile

DWR Director David N. Kennedy sees a common quality in many of the individuals who built California and America’s infrastructure of water systems, highways, and other great public works. That quality might be described as public service with an immediacy of purpose.

“They came from an era when adequate water, transportation and education were not taken for granted,” Kennedy said. “And they knew the infrastructure to provide these things would not be built unless strong leadership built them.”

Among the leaders in building California’s water infrastructure Kennedy has known personally are former Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and all former DWR Directors.
When Governor George Deukmejian asked Kennedy to become DWR Director in 1983, Kennedy discussed the offer with William R. Gianelli, who had been Director under Governor Ronald Reagan.

Gianelli urged Kennedy, then Assistant General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to go to Sacramento. “Bill has a very strong sense of public service,” Kennedy said. “He and Bill Warne (the late William E. warne, DWR Director under Governor Edmund G. Grown) had a very strong belief in providing facilities to meet the public’s needs.”

Kennedy studied civil engineering because he also attaches importance to public works projects such as dams, aqueducts, and highways in meeting society’s needs.

If he could engineer time, would Kennedy prefer to serve as DWR Director now or back when construction was just beginning on the massive State Water Project? “I don’t have a personal preference as to whether you’re building a system or maintaining and expanding that system,” Kennedy said. “It’s just as interesting to assure that a system is well maintained as it is to build it. And I think that over the last 15 years we have averaged about a hundred million dollars a year in construction, including the North Ban Aqueduct, East Branch Enlargement, Coastal Branch, and now the East Branch Extension.”

Kennedy was on the scene as a young DWR engineer in the early years of construction of the State Water Project. Just out of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the former lieutenant’s first DWR job in 1962 was working on aqueduct design, helping bring reality to the water system that Governor Brown had pushed through the Legislature.
Kennedy’s second DWR job included reconnaissance-level planning for the proposed Dos Rios Dam in Mendocino County that would have tapped the free-flowing Eel River.

Governor Reagan, who had defeated Brown at the polls to become Governor, killed the Dos Rios Project because it would have flooded an Indian reservation in Round Valley. The Eel River still runs wild today.

Kennedy was flown by light plan over the Eel River canyon right after the monstrous flood of 1964. “It was one of the most awesome things I ever saw,” Kennedy recalled of the wreckage in the wake of the Eel’s path.

By the time Dos Rios was put on the shelf by Governor Reagan in 1969, Kennedy had taken a position with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He was promoted to Assistant General Manager in 1974.

Kennedy does not follow anyone’s book on management style, but supports Department employees and has an eye for talent. Once, when told it was to his credit that he filled top DWR positions from within the Department rather than searching outside, Kennedy responded that the credit lay with the Department.

Director Warne, and others, Kennedy said, built strong systems of management and accountability into DWR that brought the State Water Project to completion “on time and within budget” and continue to serve the Department well today.

Sound management principles have permitted DWR to adjust to changing political and social priorities without losing its identify, Kennedy said.

“The regulatory framework that the Department has to operate in today is just so different than what existed 30 or 35 years ago,” Kennedy said. “With environmental and other issues, it’s a different world and some agencies get ideologically driven rather than getting their facts straight.”

“We’ve tried hard not to let ideology drive the analysis,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said DWR has been willing from the beginning to spend money to protect the environment. “At the time the State Water project was built, we included every environmental protection that was known at that time, including a temperature control outlet at Oroville that was very expensive and innovative for its day.”

As Director, Kennedy has helped to shape agreements that orchestrate the movement, storage and uses of water controlled by the State to increase benefits for all users. And the 1994 Monterey Agreement gives the agencies that purchase water from the State Water Project more operation flexibility to maximize the benefit of water.

Engineering flood control, water delivery and environmental protection is a dynamic responsibility that Kennedy believes DWR employees manage well. “Department people really are well motivated,” Kennedy said. “They enjoy working on projects that bring public benefits.”

Here again is the concept of public service, which DWR can trace far back into its history.

Kennedy downplays comments that he could have made more money outside the Department. “You never know what’s going to happen,” he said. And, he adds, he agrees with Bill Gianelli that public service is more important than a high salary.

“But I think the part people sometimes miss is that it isn’t only an obligation. It provides a lot of satisfaction and it’s an interesting way to spend your life.”

What post-DWR plans does Kennedy have? He says they are not specific, but he and his wife will continue to reside in Sacramento. Travel, reading and pursuing a developing interest in astronomy also are on the agenda.

Kennedy is amused when it is suggested that he write a book on California water issues. “It’s not necessary,” Kennedy laughs. “Everyone in California water already has all the answers.”