Jo Ann Macrina, commissioner of the Department of Watershed Management in Atlanta, GA, firmly believes that if communities are going to improve the environment, it must be approached in a holistic manner. Thus, her department manages every drop of water: drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater for residential, business, and wholesale customers. Macrina’s integrated approach is rooted in her extensive work in the public and private sectors. “I have worked in all areas of water throughout my entire career, so I understand the technical part of my job,” she says. “Not only do I know design, but I know construction and I know all of the aspects of all water disciplines, including groundwater, although we don’t work in groundwater in the northern half of Georgia.
Her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas in Austin and master’s degree in public administration from the University of South Florida, in conjunction with managing departments at consulting firms and managing departments for two cities and a county, prepared her for this larger role. When Macrina took her post in Atlanta, she hit the ground running. Her first order of business: reorganize the department. “There are always challenges when you take on a department that has been ingrained in the existing approaches taken to do the work,” she says. “I saw there were silos that constrained us from really incorporating new technologies that would allow us to do our work better and more efficiently. The silos prevented us from communicating across the different bureaus and divisions of the department.”
She worked to tear down the silos to promote more communication and collaboration. “I like to say we’re not a department of water and sewer, we’re the Department of Watershed Management,” says Macrina. “We have to look at what we do as a holistic field, blending these different disciplines, because they do overlap. We were divided by the wastewater function and drinking water function, and stormwater was pushed off into the corner, mostly forgotten.”
Macrina’s reorganization created linear infrastructure operations, encompassing all of the pipes that the department is charged with managing and maintaining. Additionally, she incorporated the Office of Water Treatment and Reclamation, which includes the plants, pump stations, and reservoirs. The Office of Watershed Protection takes care of all of the regulatory compliance requirements. Macrina created two new divisions for the Bureau of Engineering Services, GIS and database management; the other is asset management.
“Asset management plays a very critical role in the department, both in planning out some of our CIP and ensuring that we are proactive with our maintenance,” says Macrina.
The driving force behind the reorganization is to “move away from the reactive mode to the proactive mode and get ahead of the curve, which also helps us stay within our budget,” she notes. She also created several smaller offices that report directly to her, including safety, homeland security, emergency response, communication and community outreach, and a new one called performance and accountability, which ties into Macrina’s strong philosophy that the department needs to hold itself accountable to the ratepayers. But reorganizing the department was only the first step.
“The next step was opening up communications, but also empowering people to use their skills with creativity,” says Macrina. “Everyone here in watershed management is either an engineer, a scientist, or are part of one of the support services, and they’re all very creative. We need to use our own creativity to come up with new approaches to what we do.”
For Macrina, it’s not just about integrating the various water disciplines. “It’s integrating the social, environmental, and technical aspects of what we do,” she says. “We have to remember that we work in people’s backyards and in their neighborhoods, and what we do can be very disruptive. We need to make sure we’re integrating everything that’s not just important to people’s health and safety, but also important to their quality of life. We play a big role in that.”
The department’s work also plays a significant role in the area’s economics, Macrina adds. She says as department employees examine ways to integrate the different disciplines, “we look at how we can put a project into the ground that will ensure that we are not just treating water and making sure our drinking water source is protected, but also making sure that our stormwater gets improved because it is the largest pollutant load that we have in our natural streams.”
Atlanta is now putting a spotlight on green infrastructure. “It’s a new approach to solving not only our water-quantity issues, but our water-quality issues,” notes Macrina. “A lot of people forget that we have to pay attention to the habitat around us and reestablish some of our habitat. That goes hand in hand with water quality and quantity. That includes all of the bugs and bunnies, all of the vegetation, and everything that goes together and makes the environment healthy.” One of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s biggest initiatives is sustainability, Macrina points out. “We incorporate everything we can to support the mayor’s sustainability initiative, and green infrastructure plays a very big role in that,” she says. “So even when we look at our wastewater systems and our combined sewer systems, we can solve a lot of our problems if we look to solving the stormwater problem.”
Another one of Reed’s initiatives is for Atlanta to become “best in class” among utilities, Macrina says. “I’ve got a highly motivated and very creative staff, and in the three years I’ve been here, we have accomplished a lot in terms of progressing from an organization that was very much siloed to one that is being empowered,” says Macrina. “We are in fact a model in many of our areas, from ordinances that we have written to supporting green infrastructure in other creative approaches to putting projects in the ground that have achieved a lot of recognition for great examples of working in the community, economic enhancements, and also our goals of increasing the capacity of our systems.”
What She Does Day to Day
Macrina laments that although she doesn’t get to spend enough time outside, her efforts are all geared toward protecting the region’s resources. “I look at my role as removing obstacles in the way of progress that my staff is making,” says Macrina. “We really are problem-solvers and we have to come up with creative solutions. Another big part of my job is to motivate my staff. I need to empower them and give direction, translate what the mayor’s goals and initiatives are down to the goals and initiatives of the department, and ensure those larger goals are met through our efforts.”
Part of her job entails strategic planning, monitoring progress, and measuring Atlanta’s utilities against those of other cities. The Department of Watershed Management has many facilities on which Macrina must keep tabs. She oversees a staff of some 1,500 professionals that include work crews, inspectors, scientists, engineers, designers, modelers, and construction managers. “There’s a large group to work with and make sure that they’re motivated and that they understand that what they do makes a difference,” says Macrina. “I make sure they have the ability to use their skills and talents to the benefit of the city and the public that they serve. Our highest purpose is to provide safe, clean drinking water to our customers, but we also want to do it in a manner that is efficient. We also want to maintain the value of our assets and make sure that what we do does protect the environment as we work in these communities.”
Macrina sometimes finds her mission means taking the message outside Atlanta, as she did on a recent trip to Washington DC, where she served on a National Association of Clean Water Agencies panel to brief Congress on the importance of clean water. “Clean water includes both wastewater treatment as well as stormwater treatment,” asserts Macrina. “It was very much recognized that stormwater is the top pollutant source of our natural streams.”
Part of her presentation was about Atlanta’s successes, including working through two consent decrees the city received in the late 1990s. A CSO consent decree was completed in 2007–“very successfully on time and under budget,” notes Macrina. “We are progressing through our sanitary sewer consent decree and have achieved so much success, and we were able to make the argument that we needed an extension to complete the consent decree.”
Although it was to be completed this year, the EPA granted Atlanta a 13-year extension. “We presented to the EPA what our situation is; we pay the highest water and sewer rates in the country and we were put on a very accelerated timeline,” says Macrina. “In the end, that constrained most of our focus to our collection system, and that was somewhat at the detriment of our drinking water infrastructure and our facilities.” The extension will allow Atlanta to “refocus holistically on our total responsibility,” says Macrina. “We are now realigning all of our activities and ensuring that we have balance. We have breathing room and can open up our program and emphasize all parts of what the department is working on.”
Macrina says she avails herself of every opportunity she can to inform people Atlanta got its consent decree because of all of the fats, oils, and grease (FOG) spills. “We went from about 800 spills a year down to approximately 130 spills a year,” points out Macrina, adding that “it’s still too many. But the fact is that we dropped down that far in a short period of time. What I’m looking at now is still 50% of our spills are due to FOG that clogs up our sewer system, so I always try to put a plug in that if you’re part of the problem, you have to be part of the solution. It’s like stormwater. You have to take care of what you’re putting down the drain that leads to our streams. It’s all very much connected.”
What Led Her to This Line of Work
As a child, Macrina had her sights set on becoming an astronaut. “I knew I wanted to be some sort of engineer since I was five years old,” she says. “I was one of those kids who used to pull up manhole covers to see what was going on in there.” Macrina’s father was in the US Air Force, and she grew up on a number of Air Force bases. To pass the time, she’d ride her bicycle to the airfield to watch the jets fly in and out of the base. During her high school years, her father was stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Two students from every high school in the area were chosen to work at the NASA Langley Research Center, and Macrina was one of the fortunate ones to be chosen. “I got to work there for two summers as an intern,” she says. “That was the best job. I got to work in the building attached to a hangar with all kinds of aircraft. They had to modify these aircraft for different experiments. I got to go up in some of these aircraft. I always liked math and science.”
From there, Macrina did an internship with the US Geological Survey. That was followed by employment with various consulting firms, learning how to do modeling simulations of floodplains. Macrina became a designer, engaging in field work and data collection and analysis. “I would do all sorts of design, including transportation design and traffic engineering as well as drainage design and floodplain modeling and mapping. I got into large floodplain mapping as well,” says Macrina.
She would go on to work for the Southwest Florida Water Management District. She started out as a senior regulatory reviewer and then became involved with the Surface Water Improvement and Management program. The program addressed flood protection, water quality, water supply, and habitat with a team of 10 people–three engineers and seven scientists. “I got to work with zoologists, botanists, limnologist, and entomologists, and I learned the science side of the water resources business,” notes Macrina.
There were many water bodies in the 16-county area covered by the district. “We each had our own priority water bodies, plus a group of us worked on Tampa Bay. We got to do fun things like go out in the bay and plant sea grasses and collect data with the dolphins swimming around. In Lake Panasoffkee, the only way to access a lot of parts of it was traveling on an air boat. We’d be in the same water bodies with manatees. It was a great job,” she says. “We were on the forefront of some of the watershed management plans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and not only did we put these plans together, but we put together projects that we had to construct. I did multipurpose projects that would improve water waters, improve habitat and also do flood protection.”
Macrina also engaged in public education, particularly targeting young people. She worked with a teacher to produce an eight-section stormwater management teachers’ manual. “We would hold workshops for the teachers and take students out on field trips. We did scavenger hunts.”
The manual included a variety of exercises and experiments. It also included a field book to be created in the classroom and taken out to the field so educators and students could identify different wetland plants and engineering devices used to manage stormwater and flood protection. Macrina’s projects won many environmental excellence awards from various Florida groups.
After working in Florida for 10 years, Macrina went to Atlanta to work for consulting firms, managing water resources departments. She worked for the city of Roswell, GA, in transportation for a short time, then worked for DeKalb County on water issues. Three years ago, she took the job as commissioner of the Department of Watershed Management.
What She Likes Best About Her Job
Macrina takes pride “in the fact that we make a difference,” she says. “Our highest calling and a very honorable calling is giving people safe and clean drinking water. We know from history that by just doing that, it saves lives. There’s a statement in the industry that we have saved more lives in history than the medical profession.”
Additionally, she enjoys that the department she leads protects the environment and improves communities. “When we are out there doing our work, we are making a difference,” she says. “Unfortunately, a lot of our work is underground. We are bringing some of our work aboveground where people can actually see it and appreciate it. We hope to be more visible because most of the time in what we do, we’re out of sight, out of mind. We’re underground, unseen.”
Macrina says she likes to say her department provides convenience. “You don’t have to go to the store to buy water,” she points out. “You can stay at home, turn on your faucet, and safe, clean drinking water comes out. We bring the drinking water to you. There isn’t a day that goes by that people, unknowingly, rely on us. And it’s only when they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out that they call. We know that even though that people may not recognize that every day, we know that we make a difference on a daily basis.”
Macrina agrees with others in the industry that the general public does not comprehend the true cost of sourcing, conveying, and treating water. “If you look at the cost of a wastewater treatment plant, it can be around $800 million,” she says, adding that of Atlanta’s four plants, one is now being decommissioned. “Our oldest wastewater treatment plant was built in 1910,” she says. “It’s got obsolete technology. It’s akin it to a Model T. You can’t even find parts for this anymore. We have to be very cognizant of how much money we need to invest in a facility to keep maintaining it or if it’s time to decommission it. We are going to be busy looking at our facilities now that we have a 13-year extension. We can focus on the rest of our facilities.”
Macrina also enjoys the fact that what she does is part of a bigger industry picture. “There’s a lot of satisfaction in working in the industry and being able to contribute to the industry as well,” she notes. “It’s an absolutely wonderful job, and I’m honored that the mayor has confidence in me to handle this job. I’ve got an absolutely fantastic staff.”
Her Biggest Challenge
Technology is always changing and “our industry has to change along with it if we’re to keep up with what’s going on in the rest of the world–new approaches, new technologies, new chemicals to treat better and safer,” says Macrina of her challenges. “Also, we need to keep up with the changes in our demographics. We’re going to be seeing about a 40% attrition rate in the next four to seven years. We’re going to be looking at how we can develop our staff. We need to make sure that they have the latest tools to use. Since we’re going to be losing a lot of staff, we’re going to be leaner and we have to be smarter. We’re going to be utilizing the tools that are going to be available to us. There are a lot of exciting things coming down the line in the next few years. There are also going to be a lot of challenges. I think we’ll be able to meet those challenges very, very well and continue to grow to be best in class.”
Budget constraints are another challenge, as well as achieving the expectations of the public the department serves. “The expectations can be very high and sometimes not realistic,” points out Macrina. “We have to learn to navigate that, to educate the public we serve and help them understand that we do have real constraints. That’s another reason why using our creativity and technology is so important.”
