For Immediate Release
December 16, 2020
Contact
Melanie Mow Schumacher, Special Projects-Communications Manager
Phone: 831-475-8501, ext. 153
Soquel Creek Water District Swears in First Female Board President Rachél Lather
Soquel, CA (December 16, 2020) - At its Board meeting last night, Soquel Creek Water District swore in Board member Rachél Lather as President of the Board. The duties of the President include overall leadership of the Board in carrying out its responsibilities and developing policy, presiding over Board meetings, representing the District with other agencies, making Board committee assignments, and other functions.
Ms. Lather is the first woman to hold this position with the District's Board of Directors and the first Hispanic (she is of Puerto Rican descent). She has been on the Board since 2016, serving on the Water Resources Management and Infrastructure Committee, and as an alternate on the Public Outreach Committee and the Finance and Administrative Services Committee.
"I'm humbled and gratified by the confidence that my colleagues on the Board have shown in selecting me to serve in this capacity," said Ms. Lather. "We live in unsettled times, and one thing I want to offer is a sense of hope and optimism at the local level - that we are clearly, unequivocally focused on providing clean water to our community every day and developing supplemental water supplies for the future. I'm proud to be the first woman and the first Hispanic to lead the District's Board of Directors. And equally important, we can all be proud of the work that the District is accomplishing and will accomplish as we move into 2021 and beyond."
Ms. Lather is a resident of Aptos and is a registered CA civil engineer, having worked in that capacity for more than three decades. As a Board member and now Board President, she is utilizing her 15 years of experience as Sanitation Engineer for Santa Cruz County Sanitation District, where she managed the engineering design and analysis for sewers and pump stations, rate setting, budget development, project review, billing, and customer service. Her extensive experience also includes geotechnical engineering related to foundation design, slope stability, and soil and groundwater remediation projects. All of these elements of Ms. Lather's background have great relevance to the District's operations, especially as construction gets underway this year on the Pure Water Soquel pipelines and treatment facilities.
Also, at last night's meeting, the Board swore in Dr. Bruce Daniels and Dr. Tom LaHue, who was re-elected in November's election to serve four more years on the Board. Dr. Tom LaHue was then voted in by his fellow board members to serve as the Board's Vice-President, tasked with acting as president in Ms. Lather's absence and will take Board Presidency for 2022.
About Soquel Creek Water District
The Soquel Creek Water District is a local government agency that provides water resource management within its service area to deliver a safe and reliable supply of high-quality water to meet present and future needs in an environmentally sensitive and economically responsible way.
