Gilroy – Ram Singh knows water. There’s no question about that.
He knows how to channel it, dam it, preserve it, finance it and plan for its use, years into the future.
The San Jose State University professor has worked on every imaginable aspect of water resources management in his 45-year career, and he’s certain the Santa Clara Valley Water District is getting it all wrong. That’s why on election day June 6, he hopes to unseat incumbent Rosemary Kamei as District 1 representative to the agency’s governing board.
“Right now, the board completely consists of lay people,” Singh said. “They don’t know engineering, environmental issues. They have become a rubber stamp. [Executive Director] Stan Williams is a lawyer and he wants to build an empire. They don’t understand which projects are worth doing and which are not.”
That hasn’t always been the case, according to Singh, who has taught an army of engineers now in key positions throughout the state. His students include former agency director Ron Esau, whom Singh taught in the early ’70s. In those days, the district was a leaner agency with technical expertise abundant at all levels, from the board down to staff, and a strict focus on water distribution and flood control.
But those days are gone, said Singh, who has watched water rates double since 2000 and the district’s staff mushroom from 500 employees to 850 in the last 12 years.
“The total budget of San Jose State University is not even $300 million,” Singh said, alluding to the district’s $264 million budget. “And that’s with 2,000 professors.”
Signs of the district’s profligate spending are everywhere, Singh says, pointing as one example to a 10,000-square-foot daycare center which he says serves 20 children. He refers to the agency’s ultra-modern campus in San Jose as the Taj Mahal.
Yet Singh is not ready to start slashing programs. He would like to see greater efforts to secure federal and state grants to help finance the core missions of flood control and water distribution, and unlike fellow candidate and engineer Terry Mahurin – another bitter critic of district spending – Singh believes the agency must continue buying water from the Central Valley and other areas.
“You can’t avoid these duties, but the question is, are we managing them in the right ways?” Singh asked. “I think the top-level management at the district is incompetent. There is so much waste and duplication going on.”
Singh hopes to return the agency to its core mission by bringing his years of expertise to the board. The San Jose resident, now 69, started his career in India, where he designed and managed a small dam and canal system in the late ’50s, after receiving his first degree in engineering. He earned a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University in 1965 and worked several years as a professor of water resources in Canada, before returning to the West Coast for the remainder of his career as a consultant and teacher.
“I have done design, planning, maintenance on all aspects of water resources management – flood control, groundwater, wells, dams, creeks, levees,” Singh said. “My life is water, water, water.”
But his greatest strength could prove his undoing June 6. Singh readily admits that he is a water expert – not a politician – who committed the amateur mistake of hitting the campaign trail late in the game. He missed the window for endorsements doled out by political groups and newspapers in March and April – the Dispatch endorsed Mahurin over Kamei and Morgan Hill rancher Johne Baird – and has lost out on the bulk of contributions that accompany such public seals of approval.
Yet he remains hopeful that voters will propel him to the board as the first in a new cadre of experts determined to rein in the agency.
“We need to take control of the runaway freight train,” Singh said, “and start doing things in a sensible way, with the public in mind.”
Serdar Tumgoren, Senior Staff Writer, covers the county for The Morgan Hill Times. Reach him at 847-7109 or st*******@gi************.com.
