Resilience Is Now: A Conversation with Andy Bochman and Sunny Wescott Following ACWA’s Spring Conference

Featuring Andy Bochman, Resilience Strategic Lead at West Yost, and Sunny Wescott, Chief Meteorologist at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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California’s water systems are entering a new era, one where resilience is no longer a forward-looking concept, but a present-day responsibility. 

At this year’s ACWA 2026 Spring Conference, leaders from across the water, climate, and infrastructure space came together for a timely conversation: Resilience is Now a Critical Asset for California Water Utilities. Moderated by Andy Bochman of West Yost, the panel featured Sunny Wescott, Chief Meteorologist with GEOINT ISAC; Andrew Fecko, General Manager of Placer County Water Agency; and Liz Crosson, Chief Sustainability, Resilience and Innovation Officer at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. 

Each brought a distinct perspective, from forecasting extreme weather and understanding cascading system risks, to managing utility operations and advancing resilience at a regional scale. 

The conversation reflected a clear shift. The risks facing water agencies are evolving faster, becoming more interconnected, and showing up in ways that challenge traditional planning approaches. From climate-driven impacts on the water cycle to increasing pressure on infrastructure and operations, agencies are moving beyond strategy and into implementation. 

Following the panel, Andy and Sunny continued the conversation, exploring what makes the water sector distinct, how climate models are informing planning, and why resilience requires a deeper understanding of the systems that depend on one another. 

We are grateful to ACWA for creating space for this important dialogue and for bringing together voices across disciplines to help California water leaders think critically about what resilience requires now. 

A Conversation with Andy Bochman and Sunny Wescott 

Andy Bochman: Sunny, you speak to many different types of audiences in any given year. What have you found in the water sector? To what extent are they different from other audiences? 

Sunny Wescott: I think that the water folks have a greater understanding of the downstream effects of their actions. When we were talking about the Colorado River during the panel, I noted that we’re about to reduce the flows to one of our massive reservoirs by quite a lot, begging the question, what does that mean for that reservoir? 

It’s Lake Powell versus Lake Mead and it seems we’ve decided to keep Powell, essentially ending Mead. And I can’t help thinking about the Hoover Dam, an iconic American engineering feat, what does it mean for our identity and cultural history for it to no longer play the important role it’s played since 1936? 

“Most decision makers seek quick and simple answers.”

Andy: What’s the approximate timeframe for that to happen from current projections? 

Sunny: Well, we’re looking at Lake Powell facing deadpool by the fall of this year. Let’s say we manage to somehow buy some time between now and then, maybe it will hold on til December, maybe January. That gets us a couple more months assuming that we get enough precipitation. 

But the precipitation is modeled to be in New Mexico, where it will bypass the upcharge needed, because it’s going to be downstream. As you alluded to in our panel, Andy, water is never where we need it to be, in this case it’s going to be in wrong parts of the basin. And it’s too hard to move it. 

So when we’re looking at the water that’s coming, it’s probably not going to be in places where we need it most. We’re likely going to lose a lot of Lake Powell volume, lose a lot of hydroelectric power by the end of this year. And that means we’re going to have to have the conversation about letting go of Lake Mead, or changing the entire river system by putting a cover on it. 

But who would pay for that? How long would it take for us to cover it with enough material to slow evaporation? There are so many difficult questions while most decision makers seek quick and simple answers. 

Andy: What’s likely to happen as it continues to drain out? 

Sunny: The electricity planning term is derating. When things are full and times are happy, we can expect the turbines to spin at a certain speed frequency and generate their rated amount of megawatt hours. But as the water goes down, and the pressure and volume decrease, physics tells us you get less energy out of it, less electricity out of it. And when substantially derated, you get too little to make much of a difference on the grid. 

Andy: With the climate modelers at universities and the national labs under pressure, what’s your view of the current climate modelers’ capabilities, about what they’re projecting for the next 5,10, 25 years. Do you have confidence in them? Are you starting to see gaps open up in their projections? 

The modelers are discouraged from saying how bad things are really looking. 

Sunny: There have been gaps from beginning. Don’t get me wrong, I love the scientific community. But I do think that bias creeps in based on the administration in power. The modelers are discouraged from saying how bad things are really looking. They’d scare the people too much, and that would change the politics. So they tend to make it rosier than it really is. 

Andy: People ask me how do you even know any of these climate models are right? I’m just a lay person, but I’ve said modelers use a technique called back casting, where you go back a ways in time. 

For instance, you can go back to the year 2000 to look at what they were projecting for the year 2025 and you’ll see a range of projected temperature highs and lows. You’ll find that the consensus of models very often get it right. Or at least up until recently we’ve fallen within the bounds of their projections. So that tells us they do have value, have efficacy. 

Sunny: Look at the projections put out back in 2015. We surpassed those fast. In 2018 we got storms we didn’t think we’d see until 2050 or 2075. We’ve also started to see the global temperature breach the 1.5 degree global mean surface temperature above pre-industrial baseline mark which many have said we mustn’t surpass. 

Andy: Wow. I’m also seeing reports lately, as you just indicated, that we are surpassing the worst case upper bound scenarios. One event that I remember was what happened in the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The Canadian national temperature record was broken three days in a row at multiple locations, with the highest temperature of 49.6°C recorded in Lytton, BC on June 29. A staggering 4.6°C higher than the previous Canadian record. And the next day the town burst into flames. That forced the scientists to go back to their models and say, “how did we get it so wrong?” Clearly they, and all of us, have a lot of work to do. Thank you, Sunny, for doing what you do, and for sharing your insights today. 

Continuing the Conversation 

The ACWA panel underscored a reality that water leaders are already navigating: resilience is not isolated to one system, one hazard, or one planning horizon. Water supply, energy, weather, infrastructure, emergency response, and community continuity are deeply connected. 

For California water utilities, this means resilience must be treated as a critical asset. It must be considered in day-to-day operations, long-range planning, capital investment, emergency response, and cross-sector coordination. 

Andy and Sunny’s conversation reinforces the value of bringing different disciplines together. Meteorology, infrastructure resilience, utility leadership, and regional planning each offer a different lens. Together, they help water agencies better understand not only what risks are coming, but how those risks may cascade across the systems people rely on every day. 

West Yost is proud to help advance this important conversation and create meaningful spaces for California’s water leaders to explore the challenges, responsibilities, and opportunities ahead. 

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