Charlie Ester retired in May as the Director of Water Supply and Planning at the Salt River Project (SRP) after a 43-year rewarding career. SRP is a water and power utility founded in 1903 which serves major portions of the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Water Supply and Planning group is ground zero for assuring a reliable and sustainable water supply to SRP’s 250,000 acre water service territory in central Maricopa County. The group is responsible for weather forecasting in support of power and water operations, watershed monitoring, water resource measurement, runoff forecasting, reservoir operations planning, flood emergency reservoir operations, drought preparedness, and data archiving and analytics. Additionally, perhaps less visible but of equal importance, the group is responsible for aquifer management, including recharge activities, within the SRP service area and maintains a system of over 270 water supply wells which augment the surface water supply during times of shortage. During Charlie’s career he served as chair of the Oak Creek Watershed Council, was a member of the Healthy Headwaters Alliance leadership team, and promoted SRP’s watershed stewardship role by expanding monitoring efforts, supporting targeted research, and engaging with the Forest Service and other collaborators on forest and watershed restoration efforts. Charlie is a 1983 Hydrology graduate of the University of Arizona.

Moderator: MaryLou Zimmerman

Most of my career was spent in the field as an -ologist, collecting data, supervising field crews, designing and implementing projects and completing environmental analyses. My career spans 25 years working in the western US for multiple agencies including the Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management. I’ve spent the last three years as the Monitoring Coordinator for 4FRI in Flagstaff but I’ve worked as a Forester with the BLM in Butte MT, as a Biologist in the Lower Colorado River Multi Species Program BOR, Boulder City NV, was the Operations Lead on Hungry Horse, Glacier Vier, and Spotted Bear Districts, Flathead NF, MT, and an Ecologist at Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Kanab, UT and with the Cordova District, Chugach NF, AK. I hold a Masters in Range Ecology from Colorado State, a Bachelors in Forestry from UMass Amherst, and an Associates in Forestry from Paul Smiths College.

Moderator: Sarah Porter

Sarah Porter is Director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy and Professor of Practice in ASU’s College of Global Futures. Established in 2014, the Kyl Center promotes research, analysis, collaboration and open dialogue to build consensus in support of sound water stewardship solutions for Arizona and the West. The Kyl Center’s cornerstone project is the award-winning Arizona Water Blueprint, a comprehensive online hub of information about Arizona water resources and policy.

Sarah came to the Kyl Center from the National Audubon Society, where she served as the Arizona state Director and led Audubon’s Western Rivers Project, a multistate initiative to protect and restore important river habitats in the Intermountain West. Sarah was also a key team member in the effort to launch the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center, a nature education center located in a restored riparian habitat in South Phoenix. Before joining the staff of Audubon in 2006, Sarah spent fourteen years as an attorney in private practice, specializing in complex commercial litigation.

Sarah serves on Governor Hobbs’s Water Policy Council, University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center’s External Advisory Council, Phoenix’s Environmental Quality and Sustainability Commission and other community boards. In 2023, Sarah was named to the Arizona Capitol Times Powerlist as an “Unsung Hero” in recognition of her work on Arizona water policy.

A native of Phoenix, Sarah received her bachelor’s degree with honors from Harvard College and her J.D. magna cum laude from Arizona State University College of Law, where she was a John S. Armstrong Award recipient. She clerked for Hon. William C. Canby, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.