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OP-ED: CPUC Helps Drive $750 Million in Diverse Spending by Water Utilities

Each year the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) shines a light on California’s investor-owned utilities’ efforts to boost local economies through working and spending with diverse suppliers.

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The California Water Association (CWA), which represents regulated utilities providing water to more than 6 million Californians, has a long-established supplier diversity commitment to help members work with businesses owned by women, minorities, disabled veterans, members of the LGBTQIA community, and persons with disabilities.
The California Water Association (CWA), which represents regulated utilities providing water to more than 6 million Californians, has a long-established supplier diversity commitment to help members work with businesses owned by women, minorities, disabled veterans, members of the LGBTQIA community, and persons with disabilities.

With the right policies and practices, we can do more in 2023 and beyond

By Holley Joy

Each year the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) shines a light on California’s investor-owned utilities’ efforts to boost local economies through working and spending with diverse suppliers.

Black businesses benefit from some of this investment, and I am working to grow that share as one of my New Year’s resolutions. We should celebrate the CPUC for emphasizing investment in diverse suppliers and push the Commission to avoid undermining this investment with other policies.

The CPUC held its 20th Annual Supplier Diversity En Banc, “Implementing Best Practices to Reshape the Future of Supplier Diversity,” in October 2022, highlighting the efforts of investor-owned utilities’ efforts to support diverse suppliers.

The California Water Association (CWA), which represents regulated utilities providing water to more than 6 million Californians, has a long-established supplier diversity commitment to help members work with businesses owned by women, minorities, disabled veterans, members of the LGBTQIA community, and persons with disabilities.

As a result of our industry’s commitment, an average of 37% of the contractors used by California’s seven largest investor-owned water utilities are owned by a diverse supplier. That equates to nearly $750 million invested in diverse suppliers and contractors in 2021 alone.

One of California’s utilities increased water and wastewater treatment spending with disabled veteran-owned businesses by 35% in 2021 over 2020, and generally increased spending with diverse subcontractors by 30%.

A3K Consulting, an African American woman-owned consulting firm, worked with the CWA over the past year to design and create a strategic plan, which has been adopted by the association’s 80+ investor-owned member utilities and addresses diversity, equity, inclusion, water quality, and water safety, all of which are issues critical to our community.

I want to see more participation by Black-owned businesses, which is currently less than 1% of the otherwise impressive total diverse spend by water utilities.

How do we increase this percentage?

Seven investor-owned water utilities collaborate annually to present two events to offer a more personalized approach for suppliers and utility buyers and staff to get to know the people behind the business enterprise.

When you know the people you’re doing business with and can trust their integrity, character, and skills, there is greater opportunity for successful business partnership. These events encourage a deeper understanding and sharing of mutual goals and objectives that go beyond the singular opportunity for contract award.

The Supplier Diversity Program, which I have the honor of running for Liberty Utilities, helps us strengthen the utility supply chain, grow and develop diverse supplier partnerships, and enhance and positively impact the communities that we serve.

I can stand confidently in the knowledge that we are positively and greatly influencing the diverse supplier marketplace and the economies in which they reside.

These achievements benefit everyone – the utilities, small businesses, and the communities they serve. Over one-third of customers served by California’s regulated water utilities live in underserved communities, and the areas served need innovative investments in water infrastructure to prepare for challenges that climate change present to the future of water resilience in California.

Our investments in supplier diversity enhance customer confidence and satisfaction and represent a high-value use of the dollars spent on capital investment. Water utilities’ services and projects succeed when the professionals doing the work know, understand, and reflect the people in the communities served.

Regulated water utilities use customer-funded dollars to leverage larger investments back into repairs and maintenance of existing infrastructure and capitalize on the latest innovations in their local water infrastructure projects. The strength of our investments depends on important financing decisions made by the CPUC to attract the necessary funding to make these infrastructure investments.

Supporting local firms with the right expertise, workforce, competitive prices, and community understanding is one way that water utilities provide benefits to the customers who help generate the funding and the businesses at work in their neighborhoods.

I look forward to working with more Black-owned businesses and other diverse suppliers in the years ahead to continue diversifying Liberty’s supplier community and supporting the CPUC’s continued incentivizing of diverse investment that benefits all of us and our communities.

Holley Joy is the Supplier Diversity Program Manager for Liberty Utilities

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Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

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Chevron Richmond Installs Baker Hughes Flare.IQ, Real-time Flare Monitoring, Control and Reduction System

While the sight of flaring can cause concern in the community, flares are essential safety systems that burn pollutants to prevent them from being released directly into the atmosphere. They activate during startup and shut-down of facility units or during upsets or equipment malfunctions. The typical flare stack is about 200 feet high so that vapors are well above street levels.

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Image courtesy The Richmond Standard.
Image courtesy The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

Chevron Richmond recently installed flare.IQ, a real-time, automated system that will improve the facility’s flaring performance.

The technology, developed by Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business, uses sensors to monitor, reduce and control flaring in real time. It collects and assesses data on refinery processes, such as temperature, pressure, gas flow and gas composition, and adjusts accordingly to ensure flares burn more efficiently and cleanly, leading to fewer emissions.

“The cleaner the flare, the brighter the flame can look,” said Duy Nguyen, a Chevron Richmond flaring specialist. “If you see a brighter flame than usual on a flare, that actually means flare.IQ is operating as intended.”

While the sight of flaring can cause concern in the community, flares are essential safety systems that burn pollutants to prevent them from being released directly into the atmosphere. They activate during startup and shut-down of facility units or during upsets or equipment malfunctions. The typical flare stack is about 200 feet high so that vapors are well above street levels.

“A key element in Baker Hughes’ emissions abatement portfolio, flare.IQ has a proven track record in optimizing flare operations and significantly reducing emissions,” said Colin Hehir, vice president of Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business. “By partnering with Chevron Richmond, one of the first operators in North America to adopt flare.IQ, we are looking forward to enhancing the plant’s flaring operations.”

The installation of flare.IQ is part of a broader and ongoing effort by Chevron Richmond to improve flare performance, particularly in response to increased events after the new, more efficient hydrogen plant was brought online in 2019.

Since then, the company has invested $25 million — and counting — into flare minimization. As part of the effort, a multidisciplinary refinery team was formed to find and implement ways to improve operational reliability and ultimately reduce flaring. Operators and other employees involved in management of flares and flare gas recovery systems undergo new training.

“It is important to me that the community knows we are working hard to lower emissions and improve our flaring performance,” Nguyen said.

Also evolving is the process by which community members are notified of flaring incidents. The Community Warning System (CWS), operated by Contra Costa County is an “all-hazard” public warning system.

Residents can opt-in to receive alerts via text, e-mail and landline. The CWS was recently expanded to enable residents to receive notifications for “Level 1” incidents, which are considered informational as they do not require any community action.

For more information related to these topics, check out the resources included on the Chevron RichmondCAER and  Contra Costa Health websites. Residents are also encouraged to follow @chevronrichmond and @RFDCAOnline on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), where additional information may be posted during an incident.

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Oakland Hosts Town Hall Addressing Lead Hazards in City Housing

According to the city, there are 22,000 households in need of services for lead issues, most in predominantly low-income or Black and Latino neighborhoods, but only 550 to 600 homes are addressed every year. The city is hoping to use part of the multimillion-dollar settlement to increase the number of households served each year.

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iStock.
iStock.

By Magaly Muñoz

The City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department hosted a town hall in the Fruitvale to discuss the efforts being undertaken to remove lead primarily found in housing in East and West Oakland.

In 2021, the city was awarded $14 million out of a $24 million legal settlement from a lawsuit against paint distributors for selling lead-based paint that has affected hundreds of families in Oakland and Alameda County. The funding is intended to be used for lead poisoning reduction and prevention services in paint only, not water or other sources as has been found recently in schools across the city.

The settlement can be used for developing or enhancing programs that abate lead-based paint, providing services to individuals, particularly exposed children, educating the public about hazards caused by lead paint, and covering attorney’s fees incurred in pursuing litigation.

According to the city, there are 22,000 households in need of services for lead issues, most in predominantly low-income or Black and Latino neighborhoods, but only 550 to 600 homes are addressed every year. The city is hoping to use part of the multimillion-dollar settlement to increase the number of households served each year.

Most of the homes affected were built prior to 1978, and 12,000 of these homes are considered to be at high risk for lead poisoning.

City councilmember Noel Gallo, who represents a few of the lead-affected Census tracts, said the majority of the poisoned kids and families are coming directly from neighborhoods like the Fruitvale.

“When you look at the [kids being admitted] at the children’s hospital, they’re coming from this community,” Gallo said at the town hall.

In order to eventually rid the highest impacted homes of lead poisoning, the city intends to create programs and activities such as lead-based paint inspections and assessments, full abatement designed to permanently eliminate lead-based paint, or partial abatement for repairs, painting, and specialized cleaning meant for temporary reduction of hazards.

In feedback for what the city could implement in their programming, residents in attendance of the event said they want more accessibility to resources, like blood testing, and information from officials about lead poisoning symptoms, hotlines for assistance, and updates on the reduction of lead in their communities.

Attendees also asked how they’d know where they are on the prioritization list and what would be done to address lead in the water found at several school sites in Oakland last year.

City staff said there will be a follow-up event to gather more community input for programming in August, with finalizations happening in the fall and a pilot launch in early 2026.

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