Get to know Zone 7 candidates

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Water quality and supply is arguably one of the most important topics for many Tri-Valley residents, which is why all of the candidates for the upcoming Zone 7 Water Agency Board of Directors election said it’s important to have the appropriate representation those locals deserve.

This March, voters in Pleasanton, Dublin and Livermore will be choosing three candidates for full four-year seats and one new director for a two-year term on the board overseeing the agency that provides flood control and serves as the potable water wholesaler for the area. 

There are four candidates running for the full positions and two newcomers competing for the short term.

Vying for the three full terms are incumbents Laurene Green, Kathy Narum and Sandy Figuers as well as Alan Burnham, a longtime Livermore resident and chemist who worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for 35 years. Running in the short-term race are Pleasanton resident Cathy Brown and Dublin resident Seema Badar.

Current Zone 7 Director Angela Ramirez Holmes, whose term is also up on June 30, is not seeking reelection. The two-year term on the ballot is to complete the unexpired elected term of former director Olivia Sanwong, who resigned to join the East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors – Narum has been filling the vacancy temporarily by appointment. 

Full-term candidates

The lone challenger on the ballot, Burnham previously worked as an undergraduate chemist, developing a method for analyzing groundwater for traced organic chemicals.

He told the Weekly that along with his technical background at the laboratory and his teaching experience as an adjunct professor at Stanford University for eight years, he hopes to bring a fundamental discipline of decision making skills that benefit the water agency as a whole if he is elected.

“I’m a strong supporter of doing what I can do for the community,” Burnham said. “I have the technical background that I think is appropriate for contributing a lot to the reliable water systems that we would like to have.”

He said that with his experience he will be able to easily adapt to the Zone 7 position and responsibilities that come with it. He added that he is a person who asks questions first and makes decisions based on extensive research into those questions.

As far as his priorities, Burnham said that PFAS, otherwise known as forever chemicals, is an important one and that the bottom line is that it needs to be cleaned out of the local water supply.

“The only question is the details of exactly how you do that,” Burnham said. “We need to work on it expeditiously.”

PFAS chemicals have been found in the Livermore groundwater basin and in groundwater wells throughout Pleasanton, meaning that water is considered contaminated and unusable.

“Sometimes I hear people say things like … ‘It’s all hopeless, we just can’t have good water or enough water.’ I don’t believe that’s true,” Burnham said. “I believe it’s just a matter of doing good analysis and engineering to provide adequate supplies of clean water that is not contaminated with things we should not have in our drinking water.”

He said working out the details and addressing that issue is important to him, but he also recognized that it will be a long-term effort in treating that contaminated water and that it is something that probably won’t be fixed within the next few years.

He also said addressing things like the shut down wells in Pleasanton is another one of his priorities that has to be done as soon as possible.

“We have to look at how is Pleasanton going to get its water?” Burnham said. “Are we going to use water from the State Water Project only? Are we going to look at drilling new wells, either independently or in collaboration with Pleasanton? Those are the things that have to be worked out.”

One of the incumbents running to retain a four-year seat is longtime Zone 7 Director Figuers.

He has been a returning figure on the board since 1988. After 12 years of service, he took a break in the early 2000s and returned in 2008, where he has been ever since.

A Livermore resident and groundwater geologist, Figuers told the Weekly that if elected again, he plans on continuing to do what he has been doing for so long, which is finding ways to ensure clean water is available for the Tri-Valley.

He said that apart from being on the board for so long and knowing how the agency works, what makes him different is his love for geology and his desire to study the Livermore basin.

“Our main supply and our main reservoir is groundwater basin,” Figuers said. “Over the decades, we’ve drilled lots of holes in the basin, but there’s still lots of things about the geology … that we don’t know, that is important to know.”

He said that while other directors on the board might be more into the politics that come with the positions such as lobbying on a state or federal level, he likes to think of himself as the technical person on the board who focuses on the details of the job.

“I’m filling in the hole in the board to actually deal with the water, where it is and how we can get it,” he said.

If elected, Figuers said he wants to continue working on researching the east side of the Livermore Basin and looking at the history of the region to get more ideas on how to get more clean water out of the ground.

He said one way he plans on doing that is by putting together all of the historical geological data he can find and use all of that to create a sort of quasi-technical geological guidebook that will help the water agency.

He also said that water supply is critical and that while there have been some complaints from the board and from the public who say Zone 7 is spending too much money getting water from other areas in the region, it is a necessary thing to do.

“It’s very expensive and very long-term, but with the expanding population we are going to need water and what we’re trying to do is not put all our eggs in one basket,” he said. “Water districts have to look out 40, 50 years. That’s how long it takes to develop the water supplies.”

Narum, who had previously served on the Pleasanton City Council for over nine years, is the second director looking to return to the board.

“I bring the perspective of the retailer from my experience on City Council, combined with a technical background,” Narum told the Weekly.

Back in early 2023, after she retired from her City Council seat, Narum was appointed through a special Zone 7 recruitment process to serve in Sanwong’s seat until the agency’s next regular election. Narum is running for a full term rather than to complete the final two years of Sanwong’s original term.

A longtime Pleasanton resident with a chemical engineering background, Narum said she has always been a big proponent of reliable water in the Tri-Valley. When she was in the City Council, she served on the Water Liaison Committee – and when the city was facing issues with its groundwater wells being contaminated with PFAS, she was adamant about staff making water safety one of the city’s number one priorities.

She also represented Pleasanton on the Tri-Water Round table and the water rates subcommittee, which is why joining Zone 7 was the next obvious choice for her, according to her campaign website.

As far as her priorities going into the election, Narum said that she wants to continue focusing on delivering clean, safe water in a reliable way and with an “eye toward good fiscal management.”

She also said she wants to develop water supply and storage capacity and that she wants to continue focusing on flood management, “which is important because of the extremes between drought and major storms we have seen recently.”

“Experience in local and regional government matters, and to date I have over two decades of experience both at the local and regional level on a range of issues including water, transportation, regional development, schools and the environment,” Narum said on her campaign website. “Communication, transparency and accessibility are key for good governance; all very important to me.”

The final incumbent on the ballot is Green, who is seeking a second four-year term after having first joined the board in 2020. Green is a Pleasanton resident with a background of working in the environmental and energy fields in the U.S. and abroad.

Green said that during her time on the board, she has done a lot of work regarding PFAS and plans on continuing her work to assure clean, safe and reliable drinking water.

“This term I successfully applied my education and experience in water resources to protect our aquifer from PFAS, address water supply and storage, flood protection and advocate for state/federal funding assistance,” Green told the Weekly in a statement. “A second term would allow me to finish this work.”

What Green was referring to was her early work in advocating for PFAS treatment systems like the Ion Exchange PFAS Treatment Facility, located at the Stoneridge groundwater well in Pleasanton.

She said that while it was a agency-wide group effort, her advocacy work helped move that project forward and she is looking forward to the opening of the second similar facility this year for the Zone 7 Chain of Lakes wells, which is located just east of the Stoneridge well.

“My early and continuous advocation for PFAS Treatment Systems has helped to realize the first system in 2023, the second coming in 2024 and a possible third a year or so later,” Green said.

She pointed to the work the agency has done in securing a $16 million grant from the California Department of Water Resources’ sustainable groundwater management grant program to cover the cost of the Stoneridge facility and to the work the agency has done in preferred bond financing to cover the second facility in Livermore.

She also lauded the work she and the agency have done with getting congressional support for future federal funding.

If elected again, Green said that she plans on continuing her PFAS-specific work and will continue to “safeguard our groundwater from contamination, advocate for funding assistance, support future water supply projects, and help finish the Flood Management Plan.”

Along with her campaigning, Green also told the Weekly that she was happy to announce a three-way endorsement with two of the other candidates: Burnham and short-term candidate Brown. She said they decided to do this because of the technical experience all three bring to the table.

“Both are highly experienced technical professionals that know how to study and understand water problems and find appropriate solutions in a timely and cost-effective manner,” Green said.

Short-term candidates

Brown is a Pleasanton resident of more than 20 years who, up until the last few years, had worked as an environmental scientist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the San Francisco office.

Brown said much of the work she was involved in was based around environmental cleanup for groundwater, surface water, soils and air. She said that cleanup included a wide wide array of environmental pollutants, one of which was actually PFAS.

“I had a military base with contaminated groundwater that we had to design a cleanup program for, so I have a lot of technical experience with environmental pollution,” Brown told the Weekly.

“My technical background — my entire career spent dealing with environmental contamination — speaks to my ability to review and oversee much of the work that Zone 7 is going to be faced with relative to treatment for contaminated wells or identifying and monitoring the possible sources of this and any future contamination,” she added.

Brown, who first heard about the PFAS issues in Pleasanton and in Zone 7 during her time on the city of Pleasanton’s Energy and Environment Committee, said if she gets the seat, she looks forward to bringing that experience to the board as Zone 7 and Pleasanton look to clean up the PFAS contamination in the area.

“I think we need to have a really good technical understanding of both the expense of that contamination and then also how to treat it or how to deal with it,” Brown said. “This particular race drew me in because of the importance of understanding that problem in particular and I feel like I have experience and background to address those issues.”

Apart from the PFAS issues, she said she also understands there are other priorities residents might have, which is why if she is elected, she wants to focus on the management of groundwater and surface water supplies, as well as the management of flood control.

Brown said that in the process of campaigning for the board seat, she has been learning more about what the public is interested in and what their concerns are regarding water.

Some of the public’s points of interest that she has been learning about are fair distribution of water rates, water supply and quality, and new sources of water supply that Zone 7 can potentially tap into.

“There’s a lot of balls in the air, actually, for Zone 7 and I’m looking forward to delving deeper into some of the issues in front of the agency,” Brown said.

Badar is the final candidate who, like her opponent would also be completely new to the water agency, is no stranger to community service work.

Coming from a background in sociology, Badar has been involved in multiple nonprofit leadership roles with a focus on business development and strategic partnerships in the community.

“I want to make it a priority and a commitment to be forward thinking for a safe and reliable water supply to meet the needs of our residents or business or agricultural customers,” Badar told the Weekly. “I’ll be committed to keeping flood control a priority, bringing solid strong fiscal oversight and being an advocate for the Tri-Valley community.”

She said she first took interest in the Zone 7 position last year when she attended a citizens water academy through the Dublin San Ramon Services District.

She said that’s where she learned more about water policies, critical issues surrounding water and the importance of investing in vital water infrastructure, which are all things she hopes will help her in the Zone 7 position if she is elected.

“With my background … knowledge of water policies and being a community advocate, I would do my best to be an advocate for the Tri-Valley community and I think this makes me an asset to the Zone 7 board,” Badar said.

“I have a deep concern for providing water that is safe, clean, affordable to all; keeping our flood control a priority given the recent rains and climate changes; (and) being forward thinking for drought, water supply and reliability,” she added.

While she would be a newcomer if elected, Badar said she has been heavily researching the position by attending meetings and reaching out to former and current board members like Director Dawn Benson, who not only has endorsed Badar but has been helpful with teaching Badar how the agency works and the ins and outs of what comes with the role.

If elected, she plans on continuing to lean on industry experts to further that work to address PFAS contamination and really learn as much as she can from them in order to find the root causes of the contamination and find more solutions to treat it.

Apart from the Zone 7 short-term position, Badar is also running for a seat on the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee 16th Assembly District, however, she said as someone who is not working full-time right now, she strongly believes she will have the capacity to perform the duties of both positions.