Mckenzie:
Hi, folks. I'm Mckenzie VanMeerhaeghe and this is Water You Talking About? A podcast brought to you by WaterOne, where we talk about the ins and outs of all things water. Today we are talking about water law. We will be learning about the basics of water and government, discuss high profile initiatives and dip our toes just a little bit into some government relations. This is going to be a very in-depth and informative episode, so let's dive into it.
Today I'm joined by Ellen Parker, who is an Associate Attorney here at WaterOne, and Darci Meese, who is the Manager of our Legal Services and Government Relations. How are you all doing today?
Darci & Ellen:
Great. Great.
Mckenzie:
All right. Let's start off with some background information. So how long have you been at water one? Let's start with you, Darci.
Darci:
I have been here for 26 years.
Mckenzie:
Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
Darci:
Sure. So I went to the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, and this was my first job out of law school. So I started working at WaterOne as a law clerk my second year of law school, I believe. And then certainly wasn't what I thought I was going to do with my my law license. But I got in here and just loved the work and loved the people. And here I am 26 years later.
Mckenzie:
Yeah! What was it about WaterOne that drew you in to work here specifically?
Darci:
the variety of things that I was exposed to, it seemed like it was more exciting than working in a law firm. I did some other internships at law firms and, for the city of Kansas City, and I just enjoyed the variety and the variety of people because I didn't want to necessarily work with people in suits all day long. So it's kind of fun to get out in the field and work with the construction folks and engineers and just keeps things interesting.
Mckenzie:
Yeah, you don't think it at first, but water is cool. Ellen how about you? How long have you been at WaterOne?
Ellen:
I just celebrated my eighth year here at WaterOne.
Mckenzie:
Wow. Congratulations. Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
Ellen:
Yep. So I studied my undergrad at KU and then went on to law school at Washburn University in Topeka. Law was not on my radar until I took a couple of classes at Ku, environmental law specifically, and business law and that's why I went to law school.
Mckenzie:
Why did you start a career here at WaterOne specifically? Was it that environmental law and goal that got you interested here?
Ellen:
Exactly. Yep. I always knew I wanted to do environmental law, so when I saw the job at WaterOne come up, I was really excited and I just feel so grateful that I actually get to do what I'm interested in, and my values align with it.
Mckenzie:
Yes, it's so awesome when you can find two things that you really like and they mesh together and become a career for you. All right, so let's dive in to the subject matter. Let's get started by talking in general about WaterOne and your role and what that looks like.
Ellen:
Well, well, one, we are a quasi municipal body corporate. So we were created by a statute back in 1957. And we say we're quasi municipal because unlike our municipal friends in cities, we only serve one public function, and that is to provide clean drinking water. Being quasi municipal means that we are subject to all the regulations. While many of the regulations that governments are think about the Open Meetings Act, the Open Records Act, So that means that, you know, everything we do here, the public could request to see our records unless there's an exemption to it.
But we're also a business. So then all the laws that apply to a regular business apply to us. And you can think about like employment laws and stuff like that.
Mckenzie:
Absolutely. And that was a great explanation to kind of dive into the difference between us and a city and why we fall into that quasi municipal body definition.
Darci:
Right. And I think it's kind of important to because we go by the name of WaterOne in the community. Now, sometimes it gets a little confusing. People think we're a private water company, kind of like Missouri American water, American water. So it's really important that our employees and the public know that we are actually a governmental entity. So we function just like a city or we have a governing body, that's elected at large. So um A couple of the differences from us, though. One is that we don't have taxing authority. So, cities can tax. We don't, but we are completely nonprofit. So all of the revenue that we make has to go back into the organization. We do have the power of eminent domain. So that's where you can take property to put in your water mains. We don't use that very often, but occasionally we do. So cities also have that and one of the things that we, we also like to highlight is that our statute actually allows us to put our water mains in the public right away. So we don't necessarily need permission to put our water mains in the public right away. But we we usually try to cooperate with the cities that we serve. But as to why we need lawyers, I think, there's a lot of work. Like some people probably wonder why cities need lawyers too. But if you look around every department, Ellen and I probably have a project going on in every single department in the organization right now, in some form or another, whether it's a contractor reviewing or some sort of dispute, we're trying to help mediate through, dealing with a governing body requires lawyers to understand all the different rules and regulations that, apply to that. So there's just a whole host of different things that we get to do on a daily basis.
McKenzie:
Yeah, you have a big, important job here. And you do touch every aspect of the business, both internally and externally.
And so to zoom in on that a little bit, let's talk about why it's important to have laws and regulations on water specifically.
Ellen:
Well, providing safe, reliable high quality water supply to our community is, at its core, a public health function. And we like to say around here a lot, you know, water is life. And so in order to make sure we meet that responsibility, the laws and regulations help us.
McKenzie:
Yeah, it's all about providing the highest quality, safest water to our community that we can. So we kind of talked about this a little bit just a second ago. But it's not just water that you guys deal with when in terms of laws So what are some other type of legal issues that come up at WaterOne?
Darci:
So essentially WaterOne is a big construction company. So we do deal with a lot of, property issue issues. We, purchase property sometimes we are trying to get easements on property for our mains in, just today I was reviewing a permit from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway to get get onto their property to do things. So we do a lot of that, construction disputes, damages that occur to our facilities out in the field or someone else's facilities. Any employment law that would apply to a business also applies to WaterOne. We have to work through those issues, helping our HR folks out with that. What else? Ellen what am I forgetting?
Ellen:
Well, we process open records requests policy. I would say we review policy that's implemented in the organization.
Darci:
And some people do wonder, do we actually go to court and we do occasionally go to court? Sometimes it's small stuff. Sometimes it's bigger stuff where we might have outside counsel firm, an insurance company helping us out, but we're pretty hands on with all that.
McKenzie:
Would it be fair to say like essentially you all are help us as a company both internally and externally, be fair, equitable and uphold ourself to the laws and regulations and ensure that we're treating everyone respectfully?
Ellen:
Oh, absolutely. And I would say that's one of my favorite things about I guess I didn't say about my background. I came straight, I guess, as Darcy did, straight in-house. And that's not a typical path for lawyers. And so I've always loved about that. Is that we have the ability to address issues before they become big issues, like my friends at law firms have to deal with things once they've gone horribly wrong sometimes. And so, yeah, it's nice to be on the front end of that. And the more legal is involved in everything, basically from the beginning, hopefully then we can help troubleshoot, issue, spot and make sure things go as smoothly as possible.
McKenzie:
Yeah, it really falls into one of WaterOne's core values of being proactive in everything we do instead of reactive. All right. So talking about laws, there are both state and federal laws that apply to WaterOne, Correct?
Ellen:
Right.
McKenzie:
Can you dive into that a little bit for us there are a lot of applicable ones, so I am sure I'm not going to get them all. But off the top of my head I'll list a few. So, I think our main federal law is the Safe Drinking Water Act. Just a little bit about that. It kind of tells us what needs to be in the water sets MCL or maximum contaminant levels, and I won't get any more into that. There's, the Water Resources Development Act or word which we follow at the federal level. In 2018, they passed the America's Water Infrastructure Act. That's just a few big federal ones. There's a Clean Water Act, of course.
Darci:
Right. And then, I mean, going back to like the employment law, I mean, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, Civil Rights Act, all of those apply to us equally. So, There are labor standards out there.
Ellen:
Fair Labor Standards Act.
Darci:
So there are so, so we need to, you know, we we support human resources, in compliance with those laws. So really that's, that's our role is to support each department that is trying to maneuver through the different federal laws that apply to them. So the Fair Credit Reporting Act would be another one that applies I the list goes on and on. But there's some big ones, and it's difficult to be an expert in all of them. But we we try our best. So yeah.
Ellen:
And then at the state level, there's the Water Appropriations Act, which I think is how we get our water rights. The Water Resources Planning Act oh one that we deal with regularly is the Kansas underground utility Damage Prevention Act. And what that basically is, is if you've ever heard of, you know, 811 or call before you dig. So it's a requirement that anyone that's excavating in the area call us before they dig. And we're, it's actually kind of well, I don't know if it's interesting per se, but we we have tier two facilities, but we're a tier three member. And what that means is WaterOne is able to go out and like, you have to call our people, and then we go out and locate our facilities. And I think that's really great because we know where our facilities are probably better than, a subcontractor or that's a really important part of, what we do because, you know, underground facilities just bring with them a lot of.
McKenzie:
Correct. That's a really unique kind of function that we do if I remember correct, and doing our own locates.
Darci:
Right, right. And because of the nature of some of our facilities that we've inherited over time from rural water districts that are of a nature that you can't necessarily locate with technology. Maps are only as good as the maps we received when we took over the water district, so we might not actually know where stuff's at, but our employees are better at figuring that out than a contractor would be. So we find that we have more success and we're probably more efficient, doing this, locate ourselves. So,
Ellen:
And then just a couple of rules and regulations, like the lead and copper rule, which are people are doing amazing work on that. I'm sure you could have a whole podcast on that if you want to. Your men like regulating emerging contaminants like for us.
McKenzie:
Yes. Those rules and regulations are definitely their own huge sphere.
Darci:
Probably the when we're talking about state law, the most important state law that applies to WaterOne is our own and our statute. So KSA 1930 501 so that statute, it goes from 3501 to 3522 I believe, maybe 21 I have to go back and look. But it basically lays out all the powers of WaterOne and it pulls in a lot of the other state statutes that apply to us that we have to comply with, including, the bidding requirements for our construction contracts. Our eminent domain power. So where, where it references those types of statutes, it sends us to the eminent domain statute or the competitive bidding session that applies to cities. So that's kind of neat when we're doing legal research, kind of the first thing that we do is look at our own statute and what are our specific powers.
And then we go back and we figure out what actually applies to us, because there's a whole host of statutes that apply to municipalities. Sometimes we fall into the definition of the municipality for a certain statute, and sometimes we don't, they define governmental entities differently. The Kansas Tort Claims Act is another one that's really important for us, because that provides us with immunity for things like water main breaks. If it's an act of God, we're not going to be held liable for that unless they find some sort of negligence in the Tort Claims Act also provides for, statutory limitations on how much we could be, responsible for an A and in particular situations. So, that's a really important one. When we're dealing with some sort of litigation, we go back and look and make sure that we have those protections. But it's a little bit difficult sometimes for, a customer to understand that we as a municipality do have that protection. And that's where the, understanding that we are a governmental organization is, is important because cities have the same protections.
McKenzie:
Absolutely. And is that statute available for the public to access anywhere?
Darci:
Sure. Yeah. If you probably if you just Google the Kansas statutes, it should probably kick something up from the Kansas Legislature website or the revised website. And you can go through and kind of read the table of contents of the statutes and find those there.
McKenzie:
Perfect. And I will find a link to that, and I'll make sure to have that link in the episode description. That goes for all links and resources that we talked about throughout the episode. Do you want to talk a little bit about the history behind some of these rules and regulations?
Ellen:
I can talk about big picture like, calling back to my days at environmental studies at KU when we learned about the big environmental movement in the beginning of the 70s. That's where the EPA was created in 70, Clean Water Act in 72, Safe Drinking Water Act in 74, and a widely sort of catalyst for that was in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in, Ohio caught fire because it was so polluted. So on the back of that and just the public environmental movement, I guess at the time, a lot of these kind of foundational environmental laws were created around that time.
McKenzie:
So what are some of the biggest conversations that are happening right now in the legal sphere? When is regarding water?
Ellen:
Well, certainly emerging contaminants, is a big topic. We're watching it and it's evolving. Then there's also cybersecurity. Another big topic, funding for infrastructure is always an issue. There are state level resources, federal level resources. And really it's all needed because infrastructure all over the country is aging. And, we're very lucky here at Water One because we have a really proactive infrastructure program and, a fantastic financial planning group. So we don't always tap into all of that funding resources, but we certainly support it.
McKenzie:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think this kind of touches on an important aspect of your job that's not always at the forefront is you are constantly behind the scenes, just staying up to date on everything that's going on. Like I can imagine you guys are probably reading so much, listening to so much, talking to so many experts, just so that you can kind of keep an eye on that and keep tapped into everything going on in case it becomes really applicable to us. And you need to just jump in at a moment's notice.
Darci:
Yeah. And I think our membership in organizations like American Waterworks Association and the Metropolitan AMA and Association of Metropolitan Agencies, where we go and those are very helpful because they really are they are in DC and they're dug in on all of these regulations and as how they develop. So they do I mean, we we have very relationship with all of those organizations and have leadership roles in a lot of those organizations. So that helps us to kind of stay abreast of what is going on and what they need from us in terms of, talking with our own congressional delegation about things. So it's kind of where the line between government affairs and legal blurs a little bit, but it's being able to understand what the ask is and communicating that to our congressional delegation and working with those organizations to make sure we're being as persuasive as possible.
So, you know, for Lead and copper example, cybersecurity, as Allen said, are all things that those organizations are taking the lead, and we're right behind them providing support and examples, of how those regulations impact us as a utility.
McKenzie:
Awesome. And personally, do you either have you have a legal issue that's been like the most interesting that you've worked on while you've been here at Water one?
Ellen:
Well, the one I kind of think of is, I got to participate. So I mentioned America's Water Infrastructure Act that was passed in 2018. And so I started here in 2017 and we started working on it. I would say 2019, but it was kind of a cross divisional team. And through that, what what we had to do was basically a risk and resilience, assessment of our entire organization. So we got to look at all the facilities and what the threats were. So it's kind of broken down into two different types of threat malevolent acts. They called it. So things like attacks on the utility, both physical and cyber and then also natural disasters. So what are our biggest threats? And you think like flood, drought, tornadoes. And then, kind of analyze that and give risk scores. So we wound up with, we figured out what our biggest risks were, and it was really great learning experience for me.
But also very comforting to know what a resilient organization we are. We have a lot of redundancy. So the fact that we get our water from two water sources, the Kansas and the Missouri, the fact that we have two treatment plants. So if one were to go down, we could still operate. And then we are continuously increasing our backup like energy generation. And so as we continue with that, we're building redundancy and resiliency into everything we do. So it was cool to see that we are way ahead of the game. And, just doing great in that regard. So that was a really cool project.
McKenzie:
Yeah.
Ellen:
For a newbie.
McKenzie:
Yeah. That's incredible. It's something that as a customer of WaterOne, knowing that makes me feel a lot safer and assured to know that, like we're prepared in for many, many, many different scenarios and we have redundancies set up so that to the best of our ability, we can take care of our community when it matters most.
*Music Break*
McKenzie:
So we've established the core of water laws, water regulations and how that can impact us. Let's move on to what we do as an organization to help contribute to those. So first off, why is it even important that we're involved in these conversations?
Ellen:
Well, I always think of saying, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. We are the largest water supplier in Kansas. So it is important that our voice is at the table when policy discussions that are happening.
McKenzie:
Absolutely. We need to be considered
Ellen:
Well, and I'll also just add to that, you know, it is not just me. We really, as an organization, do a lot to share our knowledge. And that's something that I've loved just working here, seeing. And it feels like the whole water industry as a whole, like we if we learn something, we share it. We contribute to their magazine all the time. So I guess I would just add we have a ton of experts.
McKenzie:
what are you doing to make sure that we stay involved in these conversations.
Darci:
Well, we have many different staff members who are involved in many different organizations. Like we mentioned before. You know, on the government affairs level, we are kind of tapped in with the American or with the water Kansas Water Authority, I think forming relationships with agency officials and our city partners is super, super important. So, we do have close relationships with Kansas Water Office and the communications team. Everyone has relationships with them, and that helps when when you have to have a hard conversation if you already have that relationship with them. We have relationships with KDHE the Department of Health and Environment and the Department of AG. Again, helps when laws are being introduced or, something's being applied to us that we may not necessarily be a fan of.
Same holds true for our cities. And, you know, having involvement with the, City Attorney's Association is helpful. Having those relationships with others attorneys across the 13 cities that we serve, I'm sorry, 17 cities that we serve in the county, is very helpful. So I think just making sure that we're out there, we're talking to people, we participate in meetings, participate in chamber meetings, things like that.
Is is really the key to, that success that we have in the community. And then we also have some formal, positions. I'm the chair of the Kansas Regional Advisory Committee. Michelle Wirth is the chair of the Missouri Regional Advisory Committee. We have relationships with the Corps of Engineers, which is super important when it comes to either of our water sources. So just continuing to kind of be at the forefront of the industry. Sometimes we're advocating for just ourselves. Sometimes we're advocating for the entire state. Is very important.
McKenzie:
It is. And this encompasses our government relations team. The government relations team is a collaboration among our staff leaders representing WaterOne to maintain and share relationships, information and influence within local, state and federal peers and agencies, regulatory associations and similar interest groups. Government relations is a group effort and there are many individuals at water, one who perform government relations functions as a part of their work in order to help highlight this. We are going to be doing an entire episode focusing on government relations coming soon, so stay tuned for that. It's going to be a super great episode and we will dive into all things government relations.
That being said, you two have incredibly interesting careers here at water one, and I would love to hear more about it. So let's dive into it. What would a typical day at WaterOne look like for you?
Ellen:
Think that's kind of the fun thing about this job, is that that's just not a thing. “A typical day” So, like yesterday, we started off the day we met with, member of the Overland Park chamber to talk about, their legislative priorities. And it touches water. So we wanted to kind of talk about that. And then there's always an endless queue of contracts to review. So you can sit I'll sit down and I'm going to get through this big one today. And then surely, you know, an engineer will walk in with a question about an easement language. And so, I mean, I think that's the beauty of it is, and also the beauty of, I guess, just in general, being in-house is you have to be flexible. And another beautiful thing, versus our outside lawyer friends is, you know, we don't have to work in six minute increments, keeping time for different clients because our one client is the water district. So, there is no typical day.
Darci:
Yeah, I would I would echo that. I mean, usually I have a list of things I want to get done in the course of a day, and rarely do I get through that list because there are things that just pop up. So we we end up fielding a lot of customer calls at times. If somebody has an issue out in the field, a lot of times it lands on our desk. And, you know, we're we're going to even if we don't know the answer, we're going to figure out the answer for you. Who has the answer for those customers. So we have to be able to deal with people that sometimes are upset with us. Whether it be a customer, a developer or a contractor. So to be able to kind of resolve those disputes or at least get them to a point where everybody walks away somewhat happy with the situation, the engineers are big customer.
So they having us right here with them is, is great because we get communication on the front end of issues that might be coming up so we can work with them to be proactive. When it comes to contracts, the volume of contracts is huge and they're all different kinds of contracts. You know, you have an IT contract, you have a, staffing agreement from Human Resources, just a general vendor agreement. But we have to kind of figure out the it probably are the hardest, I would say, because you have to figure out what the heck is this vendor even doing for us and what laws might apply to this contract. So I know sometimes people get frustrated. The legal is the black hole when it comes to contracts, but we actually read them review. They make changes to them even if our changes get rejected. So so we really are trying to do our due diligence with that kind of thing. So if anything comes out of this podcast, please be patient with your lawyers reviewing your contracts. So
McKenzie:
And what do you love most about your work?
Ellen:
I know I everyone says the same thing, but it's so true for me is the people, you know, this type of work, I think draws people that are passionate and, you know, just such a great mission that I love working with all the different people I get to work with and as much as contracts take our time. They also give us the ability to work with all different types of people in the organization. So I love that.
Darci:
I think problem solving is my favorite part about it, because we, we are like Ellen said, we're not really we get the issues early so that we can get presented with some facts. This is what we want to do. Can we do this within the limits of the law kind of thing? So that's really our job is to be able to say, yeah, we can do this, but this might be how you have to do it to stay within the limits of what the laws that apply to us would allow. So I enjoy that. It's kind of like solving a puzzle
McKenzie:
And you spend some of your time here at the office and some of your time in Topeka at the state Capitol. Why is that?
Ellen:
Well, so, the legislature is in session from January to pretty much early April every year. And so that is where I'll drive up there a couple days a week. Usually I'm following, in the last few years there's been a specific in the House, a water committee. So they meet on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, and so I'll drive up to be in that room. Like you said, the room where it happens just because it's sort of, helpful to be there for the meetings after the meetings or to clarify or and that's kind of where we build the relationships with the legislators and the agency staff
McKenzie:
And if you could let our community know one thing about the work you do, what would it be?
Ellen:
Well, I would just say we're on top of it. Kind of what we've talked a lot about here today. And I don't even think we got into all the different ways that our people are plugged in. We now have this, specific government relations group within water, one that meets on a regular basis. But we all share the information of what we're hearing. So many of our engineers are in to their sphere. You know, our finance people hear things from their sphere and we all get together and make sure that we're on top of it. And I think being, I guess, back to the beginning of quasi municipal, you know, the one thing we do, we focus on clean water and all the aspects of that. So, yeah, I think I would just want our community to know we're on top of it.
McKenzie:
One of you said something similar to this earlier, that kind of idea of like, we're up at night, so you don't have to be like, we are working hard. We're worrying about it, you know, finding the best solutions so that our community can just turn on the sink and their shop and it's safe. It's clean. And, I think that's really important for them to know about.
Darci:
I think when I first started, maybe Eric or somebody was just, you know, we know we're doing our job when when people can just turn on the tap and not think of it, Yeah, it's there for them. And so yeah, I think it's important for the community to know. And I think I think they do know that WaterOne is really one of the leading water utilities in the United States. And really across the board, in every department, we have employees who are at the top of their game and are the best at what they do. I think, and that should give our community a lot of security. I think that's a really important thing to know. And we didn't get into it much in this episode. I think it could probably be its own episode, but we're talking about how we're involved on the government side of things, state federal level. But there's that whole other side of the water community, the American Waterworks Association. So many important conversations are happening over there. We are collaborating not just with, you know, state, municipalities, things of that nature.
We are also communicating and collaborating with neighboring water utilities from across the United States, having those conversations, looking at the future, what's coming up and how we can best prepare and move forward in those circumstances.
McKenzie:
Right. Well, thank you so much, both of you, for coming on the podcast and sharing your work with us. This has been such a valuable and informative episode that highlights one of the more complicated aspects of water. So thank you.
Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you everyone for listening. Make sure to share this episode with your friends and family, especially anyone interested in topics like this one. The next episode of our podcast will be the season two finale. Can you believe that? We have something super fun planned so you don't want to miss it!
In the meantime, make sure to follow us on our social media pages and I'll talk to you next time on Water You Talking About?