All right, welcome everybody. I'm with my friend Dave Harrison today. Welcome to the Ocean Water Podcast. This is the voice for indigenous water rights. We'll talk a little bit more about that later today. I have a very good friend on. Dave worked at the same international water project company for four decades. That was 40 years at the same company. And during his time there, he did projects in six different countries and personally managed some of those projects were over a billion dollars.
And that's what the B like the word bicycle. So we've got a lot, we're really honored to have Dave on today. Dave, thank you so much for being with us. Great to be here, Ryan. Yeah, and then on a personal note, Dave is somebody who I look up to, someone that I've learned from. So I'm really glad to have him here today. He's also someone that I ride bikes with frequently throughout the month. Usually once or twice, we get on a really good ride together on a Saturday.
So it's an honor to have you, Dave. Dave, you live here in San Clemente. And so people get to know you a little bit. What's one of your favorite places to go get food and what do you get? I'll give you two because they're on different ends of the spectrum. One is Avila's El Ranchito for Mexican food. I'd go there eight days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I could. I'll eat anything on their menu pretty much. But if I just want my comfort level, I get carnitas tacos.
Their carnitas are really great. And then on the upper end of the spectrum, I love Vine. Vine is a higher end kind of fine dining place, but it's really accessible. It's not very expensive. People are great. The food is amazing. Chicken schnitzel, if you're really looking for something, is off the charts. Well, I've been to Avila's and Maria and I, and Maria and I have been there and we'll have to check out Vine. It sounds amazing. Yeah, awesome.
So what are you doing these days currently and kind of how did you get where you are right now? Okay, fair question. It's crazy times in everybody's industry. I actually was meeting with the head of the business unit at this company I worked for. I worked for the same company, as you said, for 40 years, but we got acquired by a big company three years ago. So this big company, the guy is meeting with me.
I tell him what I'm gonna do in 2020, says, that's great, I'm gonna have somebody else do it. I have a spot for you. So just like that, I was out of a job. 36 hours later, I'd signed an offer letter with a small company called Kennedy Jenks Consultants, great little company, about 400 people across the US. Who are really connected to their clients. That's where I wanted to be, is I wanted to be connected to clients, working with clients and helping them solve problems.
And so I'm able to do that now. And the interesting thing I'm working on is reclaimed water projects, projects that take treated wastewater and reclaim it so that it can be used as drinking water. And that's kind of the wave of the future. Here in the first world where we have lots of water and lots of wastewater, so we need a little more water and it's a great way to get it. So that's what I'm doing now and it's been fantastic.
So a little context for our listeners, a smaller company that has three or 400 people, that is smaller when you came from a company that had, I think, 22,000. That's correct, 22,000, yeah. I got that right. I pay attention when we ride bikes. You do, man, that's good. And so a smaller outlet and I know you're really happy there now.
Thanks. In fact, I'm looking forward to getting down to San Diego with you soon with my friend, Mark Bell, and meet some of the awesome people that you're working with. Yeah, yeah. So Dave, I know one of the things that really excites you now and one of the things that drives you is passing along a lot of the lessons that you've learned from the school of hard knocks along the way to people that are just starting out their career. In fact, so much so that you've written a book.
And can you tell everyone the title of your book and when it's gonna come out? Sure, it's called The Right Start, Building Your Brand to Survive and Thrive in Corporate America. It's coming out in three to four weeks. It's just going through the final publishing stages and I'm a newbie in this, so I'm thinking it's three to four weeks. I'm hoping that's all it takes. Could be sooner, could be a little longer, but it'll be out there.
And it really is, it's lessons that we've learned through the years. I wrote it with a friend of mine and got knocked around a little bit. We're experiential learners. We're the kids who when mom and dad said, hey, don't touch that, it's hot. We said, I wonder what hot is and we touched it. So we did that in the corporate world too, got beat up a little bit, but learned our lessons and have pretty successful careers. We just wanna pass that knowledge on to others.
Well, that's exciting and I wanna let everyone know that Dave's book will be a link on our Ocean Water website and Dave has very graciously ahead of time gonna donate the proceeds and some of the proceeds of the sales of the book to Ocean Water. And Dave, we're really, really honored by that.
Not only are you gonna give back a lot of the stuff that you've learned along the way, but we'll be able to leverage anything that comes in from that and multiply it in the spaces where we are working internationally. So for people who are starting out, what do you wish, what are some of the things you wish you had known when you started your career? Like if Dave can talk to younger Dave, what would he be saying these days? Oh man, well, there's lots of things. I'll give you a couple things.
One is to do the difficult things, to take the challenges. There's a great quote by a guy named Lou Pennella who was a baseball manager for years. The toughest competitors know how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. So I would say get uncomfortable fast. It's the only way you're gonna get better. And it's hard to do because nobody likes that. Nobody likes to be uncomfortable. That might mean learning to be a public speaker. That might mean learning to write better.
I know early in my career, I was not a good writer and I got hammered for it. And I decided I don't wanna be hammered like this. That was awful. I'm gonna learn to write better. And I found ways to learn to write better because it was important for my personal career. So that's one thing. And I think the second thing I would say is find a way to work at peace with others. The working world can be such a crazy place. It can be super competitive. It can be kind of weird.
I mean, the guy in the cubicle next to you can be spitting sunflower seeds over the cubicle wall. That's uncomfortable. The receptionist might be a medium on the side who wants to do your palm reading. I mean, there's weird stuff that goes on in the world because there is no normal. There is a Ward Cleaver, June Cleaver. They don't work. They're TV families. So find a way to be peaceful with all of this. Kind of come to grips with all of it because it exists and it's not bad.
It's just, it's interesting. If you, it can either be weird and off-putting or it's like, all right, the dude is into multi-level marketing. I'm gonna ask him how many people he sucked in this week because I'm not gonna be one of them, but obviously there are others or he wouldn't be doing it. So, it's just a way to have conversations with people and learn about others. Be at peace with the world around you. That's what I would say.
Because I know early in my career that stuff irritated the living daylights out of me. And it was a lot of stomach acid burnt for no reason at all. That's awesome. So what are you interested in now? What are you curious about? What's something that interests you currently? I love 20th century history. I like a lot of different aspects of history. I like 20th century history. So I read lots about weird stuff. Like I read a book about Calvin Coolidge, who I don't recommend that book.
He was a strange dude and not really all that interesting. And definitely not somebody who would go have a beer with. But I like learning about history. So I'll read, I've read a lot about water history because that's interesting to me. It's what I do for a living. So I wanna know, for example, when did we learn that there was a link between water and bacteria in virology and diseases?
And it was discovered by a guy named John Snow in London at something like the Broad Street pump station in like the 1850s or 1840s. Oh, that's what I'm interested in. I'd spend time doing that. Yeah, in fact, I remember one of the rides that we did, we actually talked about the early 20th century history of Los Angeles and how it actually is and how it's actually directly tied to water. Absolutely, yeah.
Maybe people don't know this, but William Mulholland, if you go back a hundred years, if it wasn't for his 227 mile aqua project from where they hoodwinked the people at the bottom of the Sierra Nevadas to build, at that time, the largest public works project in the nation's history, you and I literally wouldn't be standing or sitting here in San Clemente because San Clemente has been the downward growth of the population from LA if you go back and you track it.
And I'm fascinated by history as well. In fact, I remember we had both learned a lot about William Mulholland. You can't be in the water space too much and not know his name. If you're curious, yeah. So I also just finished a book by Winston Churchill. Nice. And that was a really good read, his leadership from like 1941 to 45 when they were in the war. That was super interesting. What is something, what are one or two or three things that you feel like you've failed at?
I ask people that question and they're like, you want me to pick one? But it's a good question to ask because people that are driven and people that are successful, people think that it's just been this endless string of victories and nothing could be further from the truth. So what are a couple things that just jump out to you? Gosh, oh, yeah, it's more than a handful. It's a giant bucket full. Might even have to bring in a pickup truck to move it. I'll give you a couple.
I really thought that I was going to be the CEO someday. I had people whispering in my ear, you could be the CEO of this company that I loved and I'd worked for and I was a part owner of. So we moved our family to Colorado from Southern California in 2003. I had a kid and a son in middle school, a son in high school and two in college and the two in college stayed behind. And I never got there. In a way, that's a failure. I mean, I uprooted my family, we all moved. It was very hard for my wife.
And I look back on that and think, well, what did I do wrong? And what did I, but at the end of the day, I look back on that now 17 years in the past and think, I'm really happy I didn't make that. I'm really happy I didn't get to that position. I don't know if I would have been successful there. I don't know if I would have been happy there. So I think that's, I mean, that's a failure that I look back on and say, yeah, man, I'm glad I failed at that, to be honest.
I think I've failed in not being able to have difficult conversations with people early in my career, especially when I was in a leadership position, managing projects, managing people. I was fine managing projects. I could tell the structural engineer that he couldn't build a certain kind of footing and he had to build piles and rather than a spread footing. I was totally fine with that.
But I was very uncomfortable talking to people about their work performance and some of the things that they did that weren't the right things. And I needed to get way better at that, but those early failures actually cost me a little bit in my career in terms of positions where somebody would say, look, you just didn't cut it here. I'm gonna move you to this other job. And I knew the reason why, because I didn't get out in front of it with people. Had to learn how to do that.
Had to get comfortable being uncomfortable, because that is uncomfortable. Yeah, tell everybody about some of the projects that you managed overseas and what their function was. Sure, one thing that I think was a success, we had a project, so in England, there are 14 water companies. Margaret Thatcher basically privatized the water and wastewater industry. Here in the US, they're mostly publicly owned agencies.
So the Metropolitan Water District is a public agency that's owned for the benefit of all, and is a nonprofit. In England, they're for profit. And so we were working in Manchester, it was called Northwest Water, now it's called United Utilities, helping them build through what they called their five-year asset management program. They get the government to give them approval on a plan for five years, and then they build all this stuff.
I would like to think I still am, but at that time, I certainly was a sludge expert. I knew about biosolids, or they're called residuals, but sludge is a term of art as well. And we were coming up with a plan to rationalize their sludge processing facilities across this large area with 7 million population.
And so I worked on it with a couple of guys, came to, was working there for several weeks outside of Manchester, made a presentation, big presentation to all the big dogs in this organization. And they were British. I don't know how to say it. Everything we said was, well, I don't know, maybe. Yeah, I don't, well, we'll think about it. And I hired a facilitator for the meeting, and he said, oh, you were brilliant. I said, what are you talking about, man? They didn't like anything.
I didn't hear one amen to anything. He said, don't worry about it. They just don't wanna give you credit. When you come back in four months, they'll have sorted through everything you said, and they'll do everything you said. And he was pretty much right. I mean, they did about 90% of what we said, building these big facilities. So that was a lot of fun. It was a lesson in kind of sociology. We didn't take sociology classes as engineers. So that was interesting.
On the lower end side, I had an opportunity to go with an NGO to Uganda, and work with a team to build drainage systems at this orphanage and school that this NGO was supporting. And it was a team of, I don't know, there were probably 15 people, and 13 of them were like strong type As. Like they were large and in charge, every one of those 13, me included. I was in that.
And it was one other engineer, and there were two other engineers, sorry, in that group, and the rest were attorneys, school teachers, various occupations. And so we got there, and we kind of looked at what was going on. And we laid out a plan, and one of the guys said, "'Nah, that's not how it works. "'That's not how drainage works.
"'I think we should do this.'" And I looked at him and said, "'Where did you get your engineering degree?' "'There's an Esquire at the end of your name, "'not professional engineer, not PE.'" He says, "'No, this is how it's gonna work. "'So, okay, you work on that side, "'I'll work on this other side.'" Anyway, they built this drainage channel. They just dug out this drainage channel on this road, and it rained, a biblical rainstorm in Africa. They're amazing, actually.
I mean, I put my coat on and went out in the rain. I've never been in rain like this, ever. May never again. And it washed out what they did. It felt bad. But I said, you gotta listen to me. Actually, kinda know what I'm doing. This is what I do for a living. But it was a lot of fun. It was great to get back. What we ended up doing was going a little bit beyond just drainage. We put in rain barrels for them. They have tons of water. It's just not clean.
Even the groundwater has got contamination. And so we ended up being able to put in, capture some water off the roofs, put in some rain barrels. Say, clean water for cooking and for cleaning, to wash their clothes, wash their dishes. So those are some of the things I've done internationally. It's wonderful. So what would you describe as kind of the current water situation in the world?
You are as much of a specialist in this field as anybody for four decades, exclusively working on water engineering projects, both domestically and internationally. So if you could describe to people, kind of what do you see as the current water situation in the world? Well, the first world has water. We have systems. We have regulations. What comes out of your tap is amazing.
I'm amazed during this COVID crisis that people are going to the grocery stores, in Costco and big box stores, and buying pallets of water. That's fine. But nobody's gonna serve you water that's not literally perfect. And that's what comes out of the tap. Their service level is 100% basically. I can't think of a time in recent memory, or even I can't think of a time where we had to boil water to have clean water. So first world is good.
Yeah, every once in a while, there's a boil water order issue somewhere, but for the most part, it's good. The issue in the first world is that people tend to live on the coasts or in the more temperate zones where there is less water. And so we have to be more careful about how we use it. And we have to be smart about how we use it. So we do reclamation and things like that.
But if you look in California, essentially, and these numbers aren't exact, but 10% of the water is used for residential use, 10% for commercial and industrial, and 80% for agriculture. So, and that makes sense. I mean, that's fine. You go to the third world and you have a spectrum. And the spectrum is anywhere from very arid areas of the world that essentially have almost no water to very wet areas like Uganda and Africa that has plenty of water, but most of it has contamination.
And so they have to find a way to basically kill bacteria and viruses or get rid of it. Where there is a dearth of water, it's a lot harder because what you're doing with ocean water and bringing in seawater desalination, that's usually been for them. That's usually been for the big boys. I mean, the big boys like the government of Oman or Abu Dhabi, they have big seawater desal plants. The US Army has seawater desal trucks. You just don't see it that often.
What you see in the third world is somebody like USAID or some NGO coming in and building, drilling a well so that they can pump out groundwater. We've talked about this either by hand, which they're more than happy to do, or if it gets deep enough, they gotta have a pump, but they don't have power, so they have a diesel pump. There's plenty of water out there. It's an issue of contamination really.
And in some places, the smartest thing is, again, what you're doing, putting in a seawater desal facility. People get water, they don't need a ton. In other words, in the US, roundabout numbers, an individual might use 50 to 60 gallons per day. So when we would plan for a new development, we might even plan for 100 gallons per person per day. That would include light commercial and industrial uses as well.
In the third world, if you can get five to 10 gallons a day, you're rocking, that's not bad. And folks know how to use it and they're careful with it, but it makes their life so much easier because so much of their time had been spent collecting water.
I mean, you see the pictures in the African villages of people around the water pump with the yellow, they look like gas cans, they call them jerry cans, that they're using these big plastic things to carry this modestly contaminated water to their homes three miles away so they can cook and clean. And that's one of the reasons those folks can't move forward. They just can't get access to water in a reasonable way. They spend three hours a day doing that. So, yeah.
Yep, and one of the things that I wrestled with, I have a background in public health and then I'm also a pastor. The thing that I really wrestled with was, what was my moral responsibility to help make a platform that the wealthiest people in the world have access to and take that platform and utilize that platform for people that don't have a voice.
So when we say that our podcast is the voice for indigenous water rights, what that means is that we're taking that platform that they use in Oman, that the US military uses, that the most advanced and most monetary blessed economies in the world already have, and we're taking that and we're doing small scale projects. It's the same technology, but we're dispersing it for marginalized and forgotten groups of people.
So for example, like in Palmecito, there are 38 families and a lot of people say, well, would you do a project for 38 families? That's roughly 300 people in Palmecito, literally just on the west side of the main road toward the ocean, and my answer is yes, of course. When did 300 people quit being important?
Yeah, that's exactly right, and I think what is great about what you're doing is that you have, you've trained a local guy, you understand that it's not just putting the hardware there, it's learning how to operate it, it's learning how to maintain it, it's getting spare parts, so when bearings go out on a pump or one of the membranes fails in the RO system, it has access to spare parts, because this is a long-term deal, that stuff should last a long time.
Yes, yeah, and thank you for, we're gonna continue to talk some more, but one of the reasons I felt compelled to start to have these conversations with my friends is not because I need another thing to do.
You know, my passion for this was to start to have one conversation at a time with one person at a time to help really raise minds on this issue, and we really want to be, I saw that there was really no one speaking into this space, and so I thought, well, if no one's speaking into this space, and this is such important, and the people that need the platform don't have the voice to speak into the space, so let's lean into that and do as much good, as good as possible.
For those of you who are listening, you can see why Dave's like a mentor of mine, you can see why I like to ride bicycles with Dave when he's a wonderful human being, but I always come with tons of questions, I probably talk the entire time, except when we go up hills. That's true. That's not cool, but I always learn so much from you, so what do you think, help our listeners, what do you think about what ocean water does?
Oh, I think it's fantastic, I mean, there's an opportunity, because a couple things, Ryan, one I think is scale, right?
You can overscale these things, you can make them too big, and it becomes very hard to do, hard to raise the funds, hard to deliver the equipment, I mean, you have, you found something, I think this is one of the things I find very clever, and whenever I talk about ocean water, I mention this to people, Ryan found this equipment that he can put in suitcases that are 50 pounds, and he can put on a plane and take with him.
Now, one of the great advantages of that is, you don't have to source equipment in another country, you don't have to run it through customs, you don't have to, so I think that's one thing.
I think the other thing is you found places that want it, and are willing to step in, and I mean, step in and run it, and get it going, and make sure that it's available to all, because that's what water should be, available to all, and so I really like those two aspects of it, I think it's the right scale, maybe it'll get bigger, but it could be modular too, instead of packing 350 gallons per day treatment system in three suitcases, you make a 700 gallon a day system,
and you bring six suitcases, right? So I like the modularity of it as well, so yeah, I think those are really great aspects of it, Ryan. Those people don't have a voice, they don't have water, I don't know how they get along, how they survive, I've been in places and I just wonder, how do you get, I mean, I've been in Afghanistan drinking tea with the tribal elders in a refugee village, thinking to myself, where did this come from? Where did the water come from?
Where did the milk come from, and when will I die? I didn't die, so I was all right. Well, the backdrop that I'm using, I'm trying to use, it's a little fuzzy here today, but is actually of our site in El Salvador, and that was strategic, and also, I didn't know you were gonna use an ocean, so this is tying together really well, because you're right, we don't have a quantity problem, we have a contaminant problem that can be solved if we disperse an easily usable platform.
And so how are you involved in ocean water? Besides being an advisor and helping me? You know, like a lot of things in my life, I'm a peripheral supporter. I'm certainly giving to it, praying for you and what you're doing. And I'm available to fund stuff when the time is right, and we kind of both know when the time is right. And so I've been able to do that, which is great. Love doing that, supporting what you're doing. Haven't been on a trip, but again, when the time is right, I'll be there.
Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, I think I speak for everybody who's gonna listen to this, in that I hope you have so much to say, and so if I could ask a favor of you, if you'll come on again in the next 30 to 60 days, and we'll pick another couple set of questions. Some of the people that I'm having on here just have so much to offer. I would love to, yeah, thank you. Oh, you're welcome, you're welcome. So Dave, thank you for your time today.
I just wanna say thanks on behalf of everybody who's gonna get something out of this. And there are a lot, I'm getting a lot of great feedback, so that's really encouraging. And just thank you so much for your time, and I hope we ride Saturday, and I owe you two goose from last week. Don't worry about the goose, look forward to the ride. All right, Dave, thanks. Bye, brother. All right, have a great day, my friend. Thanks, you too, cheers. Yep.