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MWD - The ethically-challenged board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), the largest water agency in the country, voted on January 29 to oust the award-winning engineer and revered agency director Adel Hagekhalil.
In a final act of integrity and courage that marked his 3.5-year tenure at MWD and more than 30 years in public service, Hagekhalil rejected an offer of severance that the board gave him only a few hours to consider in exchange for his silence.
Earlier the MWD board received a report that failed to implicate Hagekhalil in trumped-up accusations of misconduct leaked to the press by detractors in June. A handful of the general manager’s critics on the board misused those accusations to conduct what former MWD board member and L.A. City Councilmember Paul Koretz rightly called an “ambush.”
The board violated its own policies, acting rashly at a hurriedly called special meeting to suspend Hagekhalil without substantiation of wrongdoing or due process.
The board also failed to address evidence that a discredited favor-seeking corporation with interests at the water board, Cadiz Inc., is entangled with Adan Ortega, the MWD board chair, an ugly conflict of interest.
The board chair and a few MWD board members allowed Hagekhalil to twist in the wind for 7 months. During that time, water-agency staff, community leaders, and women and men who worked closely with Hagekhakil spoke up repeatedly of their own volition for his remarkably strong character and widely admired professional mentorship and leadership.
The collective public service to California by these dozens of independent speakers spans more than 500 years in total. More than 90 percent of the nearly 200 public speakers at these MWD meetings voiced support for Hagekhalil.
In addition, 8 of the current 15 L.A. City Councilmembers, a majority, wrote a letter to the MWD board last week calling for reinstating Hagekhalil.
East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD) called the treatment of general manager Adel Hagekhalil by the MWD board “despicable retribution of the most grotesque, dishonest, and cowardly fashion against a proven, admired reformer.”
And we called the ouster of the agency head by the MWD board “a grave miscarriage of governance. His detractors have debased themselves by breaking the rules to victimize a highly accomplished, trailblazing public servant of the highest quality.”
EAPD testified to the MWD board on January 21 and January 29 and called out the evidence of racist, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slurs by at least 2 MWD board members that the board only partly disclosed at its Dec. 10 board meeting.
At that board meeting last month, longtime MWD board member John Morris was censured for using a racist insult against a different Arab American employee of MWD by calling him a “camel jockey.”
What other scurrilous, anti-Arab remarks by MWD board members have been alleged and documented during Hagekhakil’s tenure?
Adel Hagekhalil, a progressive reformer and world-renowned leader on sustainable water policy and adaptation to climate change, receives the EAPD Heart & Soul Award from Hans Johnson, president of the Democratic club.
Here are two more:
"When are we going to get rid of those refugees?"
"When are we going to hire someone that we can pronounce their last name?”
In addition to board member Morris’s “camel jockey” slur, these remarks are “indicative of a strong animus and unlawful discriminatory intent by Board members,” according to an Oct. 18, 2024, letter to the MWD board by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) California.
In a glaring display of broken governance, as well as a violation of basic decency and common sense, Morris and at least one other board member who spewed these bigoted remarks were allowed to remain on the board and participate in personnel decisions adverse to Hagekhalil.
That board — stained by bigotry and conflict of interest, all uncorrected — broke its own rules to suspend Hagekhalil, then prolonged his suspension, then terminated his leadership.
On April 2, 2018, when Adel Hagekhakil was working for the City of L.A. overseeing sewer operations, he stayed on duty round the clock after a young boy, Jesse Hernández, was swept into an intake pipe near the L.A. River following a family outing on Easter. In a suspenseful and intricate rescue operation, Hernández made it out of the sewer alive. Hagekhalil shunned the spotlight, but his diligence was credited by colleagues with achieving the miraculous outcome.
The violations of governance and vicious mistreatment endured by Adel Hagekhalil, in turn, harm all stakeholders of the agency. They deprive all Californians of his expertise as we navigate climate change. But they also reaffirmed something all Americans really need right now: a true hero of public service.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members.)
