Building Water Resilience Through Data: Joone Kim-Lopez of Moulton Niguel

General Manager and CEO of Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD), Joone Kim-Lopez, brings a first responder’s mindset to water management. In this VX News interview, she shares how her experience as Pasadena’s first female Asian police officer shaped her leadership philosophy and drive to modernize public utilities. Kim-Lopez recounts her founding of the California Data Collaborative in working with respected water managers to enable data-informed policies and decision-making for California’s water future. Noting its expansion and growing role in producing cutting-edge software and strategic use cases, she outlines her vision to integrate water, energy, transportation, and public-safety systems—underscoring how California’s climate resilience will now depend on breaking down institutional silos.

“MNWD’s not your typical utility agency…[we are] well-known for innovation, particularly in the area of big data. The water industry has historically suffered from a lack of good data, and we’ve been pioneers…” — Joone Kim-Lopez

Joone, before we dive into your pioneering of the California Data Collaborative, introduce our readers to the Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD) and the array of services you oversee.

Moulton Niguel Water District—and I’ll get into a little bit about myself—we are a retail agency providing water, wastewater, and recycled water service to cities in South Orange County. It’s a population of 172,000 people, and we are governed by seven publicly elected board members. We have about 207 employees, and we’ve been around for over 60 years, and are really connected with our community.

I would say we’re a little unique among utilities. We’re not your typical utility agency. We are well-known for our innovation, particularly in the area of big data. The water industry has historically suffered from a lack of good data, and we’ve been pioneers on that since our launch of the California Data Collaborative, founded in 2015, which has since become an entity of its own.

Whether it’s data, technology, or AI, we’ve been at the leading front. We’re also known for our very diverse partnerships. Typically, water agencies live amongst their own, but at Moulton Niguel we understand the importance of having diverse partnerships so we can learn from other sectors—whether that be academic, private, environmental organizations, business, builders, labor, NGOs, or emerging technology—because this is how we improve. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Much of our success and work can be attributed to the partnerships that we have and what we’ve learned from others, and sharing the knowledge and the experience that we’ve gained. Even though we’re a retail agency, we have an international footprint. We are one of 80 agencies worldwide that have been designated “Leading Utilities of the World,” and that is because of not only our innovation, but also because of our work culture.

We’ve been the top workplace in Orange County for the last nine years. We are the one of, if not the only public utility agencies that’s even made the list, let alone under the distinction of number one. And the top workplace is determined by anonymous surveys of the employees that are independently conducted by third parties through some of the major news publication outlets in the country. As of 2020, they expanded to create Top Workplace USA, and since they started that program five years ago, we’ve been Top Workplace USA, also as the highest-ranking public agency on that list.

The reason why those two things are important when you talk about the future, innovation, technology, and AI: you need strong, innovative minds. You need great people with vision and heart, which creates a great culture that really spurs and thrives in times of change and challenges with innovation. And the work that we’ve done with data has really helped our industry, not just in California, but worldwide…so much so that we were recognized by the United Nations, and we’ve helped to stand up similar models and efforts on other continents. I know that sounds a little much for a retail agency, but that’s what makes us unique.

The culture and accolades you’re describing don’t emerge accidentally and typically result from organizational leadership. How has your professional background shaped what you're describing?

My background is a little different as well. Before I got into water in 2003, I was a police officer for the City of Pasadena. I know it always tickles everybody—they’re like, “How do you go from law enforcement to water?” And that was totally by accident; it was not planned. Even becoming a police officer was not by design, but I find that it’s about people, it’s about relationships, and it’s about service. That commonality really does tie into the work that I did in public safety and do now in utilities, because these are essential, critical services. We are all first responders.

As a police officer, I worked patrol. I was a field training officer. I was the first female defensive tactics and firearms instructor, and I worked for three and a half years in vice narcotics. My specialty was undercover drug buys, so I worked with the DEA and the FBI and in 1998 received a Silver Medal of Courage for bravery under fire for my response during a shooting.

I share all that because, to me, that shows my heart and commitment to what I do in public service. It’s not just a job; it’s not just a vocation. It’s something that really is a calling for me, that I’m willing to put my life on the line. And I’m small, I was the first female Asian police officer at Pasadena, and I’ve had to be the first on many occasions, because the story that I love to tell others is: you don’t have to be big to do big things, anything is possible if you commit to it. 

Before I became a CEO, now going on 16 years, I worked for people who were not good leaders, and I realized what it’s like to work in an environment in which you don’t feel safe: physically, emotionally, and mentally. So I vowed to do better.

This is my second agency as a CEO. My first agency was in Northern California, which was different geographically, as a rural community, from where I am now at Moulton Niguel Water District.  But even as different as those agencies are, I continue to live by the same values of honesty, effort, and respect. Miss any one of those, and you will not be in this organization. Several years ago, my staff at Moulton Niguel turned that into HERO—Honesty, Effort, Respect, One team—and that’s really my recipe. If you’re always honest, you can’t go wrong. Give me your best effort. You must always treat people with respect, courtesy, and kindness. That’s how you create one team.

Both organizations were toxic when I got there. Changing that is a passion of mine because I know what it’s like to work in an unsafe environment, and I’m committed to creating a better environment for staff. By doing so, I’ve created a culture of collaboration, of kindness, of helping one another and being valued—not just for what you are and what you do, but really for what you do for others, whether it’s your coworker, whether it’s for our customers, whether it’s for our stakeholders. 

That value has really created that consistency and clarity for our agency, and it’s not just me. The reason why I love the culture is that it takes all of us, and any success belongs to all of us. We require collaboration, cooperation, and integration, and that’s how the best ideas come to light. When you come to Moulton Niguel, you get to work with the world.

Joone, pivoting back to water and innovation. VX News has covered water for decades, and the sector, in the context of innovation, is often described as a “slow-moving glacier.” What innovations have you implemented, and how do you scale?

Let me begin by saying I’m impatient by nature. In 2015, during California’s historic drought, it was the first time the State Water Resources Control Board issued mandates for reducing water use. You had the Governor issuing emergency executive orders. But all these actions weren’t based on quality data because they simply didn’t have it.

Those kinds of non-data informed decisions can have unintended consequences. They can create a lot of turmoil. At that time in our agency, I had a staff member whose brother was going to NYU, and he was describing to us about how there was this big “civic big data movement,” and how they were using that, for example, to help public safety reduce response time and essentially save lives. I thought, This is wonderful. I’m not a data expert, but I can be a data advocate – let’s get all these smart people together.

I called five other agencies, GMs, and CEOs I knew, and got us all together to see how we might band together to solve problems collaboratively.  And then the California Data Collaborative was born. It really started as a grassroots effort, and some of our early successes were that we were able to actually use data to solve problems. People in the water industry say they have data, but it’s often in isolated Excel spreadsheets or in someone’s clipboards, messy and disorganized.

We were able to elevate that—creating clean, standardized, centralized data. Very early on, we were able to receive exemptions from some of these statewide mandates because we were able to show, with data, that the work we were doing and the strategies we were implementing were “superior” for managing water use than what was being required. That also allowed us to strike up some unique partnerships.

For example, through a partnership with the non-profit DataKind, we were able to work with Netflix and gained access to some of their experts and predictive modeling tools that we didn’t even know existed, nor could afford. We were able to utilize our data with those advanced, sophisticated tools, and essentially, in six months, we saved $20 million that we instead put towards other critical infrastructure investments. It really showed the value of that partnership, and that you need good data to access and leverage expertise and tools.

That just continued to grow, and ten years later, the California Data Collaborative now represents over 21 million Californians. We have 37 agencies that represent this population, including some of the largest water agencies as well as some of the smallest ones: rural, urban, agricultural, wholesale, retail, northern, southern, all sizes and shapes. The vision has been and always will be to provide social good.

With that record: $20 million in savings, national and global recognition, why aren’t there 100 more agencies members of the Collaborative?

Because change is uncomfortable. The status quo is very strong, and it’s taken time. We also knew from the beginning that it’s a movement. It’s a long game. I always like to say: we have to outwork, outlive, and outlast. That’s how you really affect profound change—it takes time.

And in those ten years, we’ve been able to do a lot. These 37 agencies represent a vast portion of the population in California. The growing AI intrigue and progress in the world, and the application of advanced tools in our industry, like smart meters, creates both an opportunity and a need for clean, standardized data.

We’re getting a lot more interest, even outside of the state, because people don’t know how to get into the AI world. We are their gateway. We have the community, team, expertise, and experience.

On water management, innovation, and AI: elaborate on the value of collecting data and processing it.

Let’s say I’m an agency and I don’t know how to get into AI. I don’t know what “big data” means. I just know I’ve got stuff on paper, spreadsheets, and legacy databases. I come to the Data Collaborative and say, “I want to modernize how I’m doing this. This is what I have, and I want to be more streamlined, more efficient. I want better data. Help me.”

We call ourselves a data therapist: What is your pain? What is your need? What are your symptoms, and what do you have?

Then we rally. We have a pool of talent, expertise, and data scientists who help figure out the data you have. We clean and standardize it through coding and all the tools that we have, and now it’s centralized. We protect privacy through nondisclosure agreements to protect individual customer data and most of the output is aggregated or anonymized, but we see trends and what is happening within that agency.

Now that we have good data sets, the question becomes, what do we do with them?

“Well, I want to understand my customer usage.” We already have tools that have been built on an open platform available for free, or “I want help taking this data and using it to report to the state and all the various agencies I need to report into.” 

We can help you with that. It’s very incremental, and one of the big surges is smart meter data. You used to have data points only every other month or every month. Now we see data points every hour throughout the day, which most agencies don’t know how to manage and process, much less utilize. We help you build it out. We were the first water agency in the country to upload all of our smart meter data to Amazon AWS, but now, that’s what people are doing. We use our expertise to work with partners to secure data and put it to use.

The other way we help is by building a community around you. “Hey, I want to do smart meters, but I’ve heard it’s very onerous,” or, “I want to go to a budget-based rate structure, but I’ve heard it’s really hard.” We have people who have been through it to help you, with experience and expertise, to give you that community and that cover. 

Right now, we’re very excited to launch the first AI course focused on water. There are AI courses out there, but we haven’t seen one built specifically around water for existing professionals. We’re going to teach professionals in our industry what AI is and isn’t; case studies of where it’s been successfully used; the potential pitfalls to avoid; the guidelines to keep in mind; and how to effect that transformation in their organization. 

They’re going to build an AI playbook where we standardize definitions, standardize some of the understanding, and start sharing case studies to implement AI in a way that’s meaningful and safe at their own utility agencies.

How did you convince the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California—necessarily politically sensitive to multiple water stakeholders—to come on board?

It actually started with staff talking among themselves and seeing the value. Our team at the Data Collaborative works very closely with Metropolitan. I remember a conversation with Jeff Kightlinger, then the General Manager of Metropolitan, years ago when they first joined. He said, “Joone, I don’t really understand what this is…tell me why the California Data Collaborative is important.” 

I said, “During the historic drought, Metropolitan invested heavily in conservation, especially turf removal. There was a lot of negative media coverage—people said it wasn’t cost-effective, that it didn’t improve water-use efficiency. But we were able to use real data to show how much water was saved, and it refuted those criticisms.” 

Once I told him that, he said, “Say no more. I’m good.”

It was a small example, but everyone resonated with the value of using real data to validate and support good decisions. Since then, our partnership has grown with each of their CEOs. Shivaji [Deshmukh]—he told me last week, “I actually want to work more closely with the Data Collaborative.”

Because again, the work is valuable, credible, and it helps leaders make informed decisions.

Let’s zoom out on what the data reveals: Does California actually have a water-scarcity problem, or is the challenge more complex?

Yes, and no. There is enough water in California for the needs we have. The scarcity comes from legal and institutional constraints, bedrock structures that are very hard to move. 

There are workable solutions. But as Felicia Marcus always says, it’s an ”ego-system”. If we can change some of the players and how we look at things, we can vastly improve reliability and resiliency in California. Our data work started with demand management: drought and scarcity. 

Now we’re shifting to asset management, because utilities have to do more with less, and we have a very fragmented system. A lot of systems are financially insolvent; a lot of infrastructure is going unattended, and it’s spiraling. On any given day in California, 600 systems are either failing or on the brink of failure, so asset management is critical. 

The third evolution we’re envisioning is an integrated lifeline infrastructure, because when you look at water, energy, transportation, telecommunication, public safety, sanitation, and flood control—in a major event, these things fail at the same time. You could have a major wildfire, and then there’s pouring rain, and now you have a flood issue. These are very indicative of the situation we’re living in now. 

For those situations, these lifeline sectors operate separately. We all respond and may end up getting on top of each other: it’s not in a premeditated, coordinated, integrated way. That’s something we’re also leading right now to change.

Joone, help our readers understand the nexus between infrastructure and water supply and distribution.

We have a big summit coming up January 28–29 in Anaheim, because about a year and a half ago, there was a national initiative to integrate these lifeline infrastructures, and we want to integrate this sector so that we could do better emergency planning, response, and recovery—but also just talk to each other, and understand how we work.

I’m also a Governor-appointed Commissioner on the California Seismic Safety Commission, so given LA’s wildfires and the disasters we’ve seen, I’m trying to create urgency and connectivity. This summit is the launch point for putting that flag up.

Afterward, our goal is to pilot integrated lifeline infrastructure in Orange County. We’ve been working with the Sheriff’s Office, OCTA and the Orange County Business Council, whose membership covers all lifeline sectors.

Think about something as simple as capital improvement planning…if I have to dig in a neighborhood and a different agency has to dig to lay down fiber optics, maybe we can coordinate so we dig once, save costs, be more efficient, and reduce impacts to the quality of life of our residents and businesses. There are many low-hanging fruits here, and we’re realizing more and more benefits of this work as we continue working with the state. 

How much harder is it to manage water today as compared to ten years ago?

It’s better because, out of needs and expectations, we have to deliver more and better. It’s forcing a sense of urgency. So instead of this slow-moving pace—as you said, because that’s how our industry is—the necessity alone is forcing a faster-paced approach. Not everyone jumps on the bandwagon, of course, but I think it’s really driven out of need.

We live in a society now where everything is available instantly, on demand. Years ago, regardless of how people may feel about the business model, I said our utilities need to be more predictable and efficient, like Amazon.

Finally, drawing on MNWD’s history and your own hands-on experience with water data, system management, governance, and integrated service delivery—what’s next? 

We want to build a smart, resilient, integrated system for California. One that treats water, energy, transportation, communications, and public safety as interconnected lifelines, because that’s what they are. 

We want to build the workforce and modernize the existing data. Equally important, we work to support agencies in feeling safe and confident enough for change.

In the long term, we would love to provide the state a platform it can use for better policy design, emergency response, planning, or even resilience. We just want to be factual, impactful, and helpful.