After a year of turmoil, Valley Water turns to 25-year veteran as its next CEO

Aaron Baker, a 25-year veteran of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, on Tuesday was named CEO by the agency’s board, taking the helm of Silicon Valley’s largest water district after a year of political turmoil and as a winter looms that could be marked by extreme weather due to very strong El Niño conditions.

Also known as “Valley Water,” the district, based in San Jose, is a government agency that provides drinking water and flood protection to 2 million people in Santa Clara County.

With 876 employees and a $1.2 billion budget, the district is the fourth-largest government agency in Santa Clara County, behind Santa Clara County, the city of San Jose, and the city of Santa Clara. A wholesale water provider founded in 1929, the district purchases water from the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, and manages local groundwater and reservoirs, then sells water to roughly a dozen cities and private companies that distribute it to homes and businesses.

The agency owns 10 reservoirs, along with three drinking water treatment plants, and manages 333 miles of the roughly 800 miles of creeks and rivers in Santa Clara County, including parts of the Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek.

“I’m deeply honored by the board’s confidence and excited to serve as Valley Water’s next CEO,” Baker said Tuesday in an interview. “Our community depends on us for reliable water, flood protection and a healthy environment. I know that I can deliver on those things. I will support our employees and work closely with the board and our partners. We’ve got some major infrastructure investments. I will deliver those responsibly, transparently and with a close eye on affordability.”

Baker, 48, is a Turlock native who graduated from USC in 1999 with a degree in civil engineering. He has worked at the Santa Clara Valley Water District since 2001 in various roles, most recently as chief operating officer of the Water Utility Enterprise, the agency’s largest operational branch. In that job, Baker has overseen water supply planning, imported water, groundwater management, drinking water treatment, water quality, regulatory compliance, emergency response and multiple capital projects.

Baker’s position as CEO begins Jan. 4. He will succeed interim CEO Melanie Richardson, who came out of retirement from the district last year following the administrative leave and then resignation of former CEO Rick Callender.

Callender, who had been CEO of the district since 2020 and who currently serves as president of the California-Hawaii NAACP State Conference, announced Feb. 20 that he would leave his $520,000-a-year post on March 1. He had been on paid administrative leave since December 2024, when allegations first surfaced that he had acted improperly toward multiple female staff members.

A 10-month investigation by an outside law firm that the district’s board hired concluded that Callender sexually harassed two female employees over multiple years, including sending inappropriate photos, making comments about his own sexual or romantic activities and pressuring them for after-hours activities, including coming to his house to water his plants and attending Sharks games with him.

As part of a separation agreement with Callender, the district’s board, which is elected to four-year terms, drew widespread criticism from its staff members and employee unions after it agreed to continue to pay him his $512,866 annual salary plus $7,200 yearly car allowance and other benefits for another year until March 1, 2027, while he worked as a “special advisor” to board chair Tony Estremera with no defined work requirements, hours or deliverables.

Estremera told employees at a staff meeting days afterward that the agreement, in which Callender agreed not to sue the agency, was a way to reduce liability and ultimately save costs.

Last month, one of the women named in the investigative report sued Callender and the district.

On Tuesday, a leader of the union representing hundreds of the district’s employees said she welcomed Baker as the new CEO.

“We look forward to working together with Aaron to rebuild trust at Valley Water,” said Salam Baqleh, vice president of the Valley Water Employees Association / AFSCME Local 101. “We know the real healing will begin once Rick’s special assignment is officially over in March.”

The board’s vote was 5-2 on Tuesday. Estremera, along with board members Dick Santos, Shiloh Ballard, Nai Hsueh and John Varela voted yes. Board members Jim Beall and Rebecca Eisenberg voted no, citing disagreement over the timing of the arrangement, which allows Richardson to stay on to help train Baker until next June 30, creating a period of about 60 days in January and February where the agency will be paying three CEO salaries at the same time of roughly $500,000 a year until Callender’s contract ends on March 1.

In addition to potential flooding if this winter ends up delivering major storms, Baker will oversee other challenges with the region’s water supply. Among them are the ongoing rebuilding of Anderson Dam, near Morgan Hill, a $3.2 billion earthquake retrofit at the county’s largest reservoir ordered by federal dam safety officials after the 2017 spillway failure at Oroville Dam in Butte County.

In recent years, the district has seen two major supply projects fail — a plan to partner with Contra Costa Water District to expand Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which Contra Costa officials pulled out of, and a plan by the district to build a huge new reservoir in Southern Santa Clara County near Pacheco Pass that failed after cost increases, geological problems and a lack of other water agencies coming forward to help pay costs.