Award of Excellence Winner Mark Pestrella: Public Service Savant Leads in Time of Crisis

Pestrella has spent his whole 38-year profession at LA County Public Works, making his method up from area hydrologist to director.
Picture courtesy LA County Public Works

“Okay, hearth. I hand over. You win.”

It was only a fleeting thought after exhaustion had set in from around-the-clock work in the course of the Eaton and Palisades hearth emergencies in January. As Los Angeles County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella crested a hill on his drive dwelling towards Ventura County, he noticed one more out-of-control hearth. Not solely was he carrying the burden of the apocalyptic wildfires’ affect on Los Angeles communities, however in his thoughts have been recollections of injury to his family houses in two earlier wildfires.

Concern. Doubt. Anger. These are “completely regular reactions, and once we can admit that, we will then start to assist others,” he informed dozens of younger engineers becoming a member of the division throughout an orientation assembly the subsequent day. After that split-second intrusive thought in regards to the fires, Pestrella mentioned he re-steeled himself for the largest disaster that LA has confronted within the trendy period. “I needed to get my thoughts straight—to let go of the injury to my own residence, to let go of what’s occurring round me” in order that he may channel all his power into the restoration effort.

One may see on the faces of these younger new recruits that Pestrella’s honesty and candor went a great distance towards energizing and provoking them, very similar to a basic rallying his troops to battle. The weapons on this battle included hardhats, heavy gear and many engineering know-how.

Serving greater than 10 million folks on the nation’s largest municipal public works company, Pestrella leads a staff of round 4,000 workers. The annual price range is $4.4 billion and the work includes managing tons of of building tasks. As if that’s not sufficient, Pestrella and the company have partnered with the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers and different companies to execute the hearth cleanup, restoration and rebuild effort.

“When somebody comes into a company like Public Works, you might want to know what’s anticipated of you. It’s worthwhile to know somewhat little bit of the course that the division goes, who we report back to so far as the Board of Supervisors, and likewise our dedication to group,” says Angela George-Moody, chief deputy director on the company. “He does that as a part of his preliminary conferences with all workers who come into the group. The suggestions that we now have obtained is ‘nobody has ever achieved that for me earlier than, informed me what the guardrails are, informed me what the aim put up is.’ And director Pestrella actually tries to try this.”

In a 38-year profession devoted to public service, the wildfires have change into his career-defining occasion, Pestrella says. However in his day job, he additionally manages flood management and water sources, transportation infrastructure, environmental and municipal providers, in addition to building administration for a wide range of entities.

After which there’s every part he does for the subsequent technology. “He dedicates an unlimited period of time in rising the long run engineers and collaborating as a mentor to make sure that we now have engineers that not solely are technically succesful, but in addition perceive the affect they’re making on the general public day-to-day,” says Stephanie Wiggins, CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro).

Pestrella makes use of the identical zeal for motivation in driving collaboration amongst most of the siloed companies in LA County’s 88 municipalities, fusing their efforts in buying funding and getting massive tasks achieved.

For his ardour to serve the general public, his potential to foster interagency partnerships and his steadfast dedication to fairness, sustainability and resilience, ENR’s editorial staff chosen Mark Pestrella to obtain the Award of Excellence, its highest honor.

Pestrella monitoring crews as they clear up particles flows after storms ravage fire-scarred soils.
Picture courtesy LA County Public Works

Firefighters battle the Eaton Fireplace on Jan. 8.
Picture: AP Picture/Ethan Swope

Pestrella at hearth command heart in Pasadena with Military Corps.
Picture by Scott Blair/ENR

Pestrella speaking with residents as destroyed properties are cleared.
Picture courtesy LA County Public Works

*Click on on the images for larger element

Trial by Fireplace

Pestrella didn’t gravitate to civil engineering till school. Earlier than then, he wished to be a firefighter. He grew up in San Bernardino, Calif., along with his dad and mom and 4 sisters, on the fringe of city alongside the urban-wilderness interface. Whereas the placement afforded many leisure alternatives—horseback driving, bikes, climbing—it additionally got here with a hidden and lethal threat, one that exposed itself one significantly windy day when Pestrella was in highschool.

“We seen that there was smoke within the mountains above us, and it was making its method down the slopes,” he says. “I didn’t suppose a lot of it till an evacuation order got here, and we have been informed ‘everybody keep at college!’ And naturally, being the particular person I used to be, I didn’t. I don’t like being informed what to do. I took off for dwelling.”

“He dedicates an unlimited period of time in rising the long run engineers … to make sure that we now have engineers that not solely are technically succesful, but in addition perceive the affect they’re making on the general public.”

Stephanie Wiggins, LA Metro

As soon as he arrived, his neighborhood was ablaze, engulfed by the 1980 Panorama wildfire, began by an arsonist. “We misplaced our home regardless of what I assumed was a valiant effort to put it aside on the time. Now, I take into consideration how little I knew about hearth, about the way it works.” The incident “began a cycle of grieving that lasted fairly a very long time; you’re left with nothing, particularly for a household that didn’t have rather a lot.”

Whereas nonetheless overcoming his loss and anger, he headed off to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo—the one one in every of his siblings to attend school—and landed on civil engineering because of his love of nature and earth sciences, and his potential to do math.

Nevertheless it wasn’t till becoming a member of Public Works in 1987 that Pestrella started to grasp each the significance of public service and “the results of that fireside on my life,” he says. “I began realizing, by means of lots of totally different occasions, how essential authorities is to folks and the way authorities truly had helped my household.” Working within the area for 9 years for the county as a hydrologist, after which as a constructing official, Pestrella realized that having profitable outcomes in fixing issues required him to take heed to what folks’s wants have been to grasp the scope of the issue earlier than entertaining options.

LA County Public Works controls an enormous water provide and flood management system of 14 main dams, dozens of spreading grounds and tons of of miles of stormwater conveyence channels. Throughout final yr’s wet season alone, the company captured and saved greater than 96.3 billion gallons of stormwater.
Photographs courtesy LA County Public Works
*Click on on the images for larger element

“He’s by no means too busy when he’s speaking to anyone, to a citizen, who’s received a difficulty. He’ll drop every part he’s doing to resolve that downside,” says Zev Yaroslavsky, a former Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors member. “It’s as a result of he’s been in that scenario on the receiving finish, and now he’s within the place the place he will be on the giving finish.”

However fixing infrastructure challenges doesn’t typically contain being within the limelight. “The opposite a part of it’s recognizing that there received’t be a ‘thanks’ on the finish,” Pestrella says. “I simply get nice pleasure out of understanding that we’re making a distinction in folks’s lives each day, and whether or not they realize it or not is admittedly secondary.”

(Clockwise from backside) Pestrella, an avid surfer, does a few of his most inventive considering whereas on the board; Pestrella’s grandfather, who was the final lighthouse operator on the easternmost tip of the Hawaiian Islands, instilled public service values early on; Pestrella sworn in as director in 2017; lifelong Dodgers fan Pestrella poses with Vin Scully.
Photographs courtesy Mark Pestrella

Retired Public Works deputy director Carl Blum remembers when Pestrella first got here to work underneath him within the Eighties. “He was a really sharp younger man,” he says. “He moved up within the group—sadly for me, they noticed his abilities and moved him elsewhere.” However Blum turned an advisor and mentor to Pestrella as he labored up the chain of command. “They put him in a really delicate political space, and that’s, I believe, the place he discovered lots of his abilities on easy methods to work with politicians and easy methods to work with delicate communities.”

“You want somebody who’s a champion of bringing collectively folks as a staff, creating that camaraderie and that working spirit. Mark represents that each single day.”

Martin Adams, LADWP (ret.)

Whereas Blum retired from the company in 2000, he continued to chip away on the area’s drought and water resilience points as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) LA chapter. Throughout that point within the early 2000s, little future proofing might be achieved as a result of the 88 municipalities and greater than 200 water provide companies lacked cohesion. “Everyone was in their very own silos. Everyone’s competing for a similar cash. There was completely no incentive to cooperate on something,” Blum says. Throughout visioning symposiums, water specialists recognized the necessity for a long-term funding supply through a poll measure, coupled with a sturdy public training effort and powerful management, he provides.

The political will for a poll measure fizzled after the 2008 recession, however within the meantime Pestrella moved up the ranks, and in 2017 was appointed director. Blum says Pestrella “turned the man carrying the torch to pursue this long-term paradigm shift that needed to happen” to get buy-in from each the general public and politicians for Measure W, which would offer round $300 million yearly to seize, clear and preserve billions of gallons of stormwater, modernize water system infrastructure and improve inexperienced areas.

In 2018, Measure W handed with almost 70% of the vote. “And constructed into that program was collaboration,” with a scoring system that gave bonus factors for interagency tasks, Blum provides.

Since then, quite a few infrastructure upgrades have been made and an total LA County Water Plan was adopted in 2023 that focuses on reliability, groundwater administration, fairness and watershed administration, and higher aligns these objectives with state and federal funding, Pestrella says. By these numerous efforts, by the tip of final yr’s wet season, Public Works had captured and saved greater than 96.3 billion gallons of stormwater through the county’s 14 main dams and greater than two dozen spreading grounds amenities.

The 51-mile LA River flood management system, which protects the metro space from stormwater however disconnects many neighborhoods, turned one other political soccer. The Nineteen Fifties-era system is “a marvel of engineering, however not a marvel of partnership with the group,” Yaroslavsky says.

Pestrella along with his spouse Kathleen and two sons Jonathan (left) and Liam (proper). Their household dwelling was broken in November’s Mountain Fireplace, which would require a year-long renovation.
Picture courtesy Mark Pestrella

A number of schemes had been floated over the many years as environmentalists and communities clamored for a greater resolution than the concrete-lined eyesore. However lastly, a plan developed by Public Works underneath Pestrella’s steering after quite a few group conferences gained approval by the Board of Supervisors in mid-2022. The plan will restore parts of the pure waterway and add parks, trails, group facilities and different facilities.

“It’s an iconic challenge that’s ongoing proper now, and the relationships with all of the events,” together with the LA Dept. of Water and Energy and the Corps “has actually made all of the distinction in whether or not or not we get off the bottom,” Pestrella says.

In every part he does, Pestrella has the general public, whom he considers his clients, in thoughts. To raised serve them, Pestrella says he’s utilized components from the personal sector in structuring his public company to inspire workers and resolve issues. “For those who take a look at the outcomes we’ve had, they’ve been fairly super,” he says. “It empowers folks to have braveness to go the additional mile and make choices.”

Wave of Inspiration

Colleagues notice that whereas Pestrella has a voracious work ethic, particularly throughout emergency conditions such because the fires or latest floods, he additionally has one other facet. “Mark is working all day lengthy and midway by means of the evening—I don’t know when he sleeps—however I can inform you, if he wasn’t at work, he’d be in a pair of bathing trunks and he’d have a surfboard on the seashore,” says Martin Adams, retired basic supervisor and chief engineer on the LA Dept. of Water and Energy. “Unknown to everyone else, Mark is a complete seashore bum and loves the outside.”

It was in that idyllic setting that Pestrella in 2021 envisioned a approach to do a deeper dive into collaboration with different LA companies by forming a brand new group.

“InfrastructureLA got here to me, the place most of my massive concepts come for me, both sitting on the again of my truck wanting on the ocean, or sitting on a surfboard out within the water,” Pestrella says. With the potential for funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Invoice, which had not but been handed at that time, he foresaw the necessity for tactics to prioritize and share efforts to acquire funding for wanted infrastructure.

Pestrella pitched the thought to Adams, LA Metro’s Wiggins and the pinnacle of LA County Sanitation throughout a dinner, who all agreed to kind InfrastructureLA, a voluntarily cooperative non-political group to foster widespread objectives and options.

“Collectively, we have been capable of determine the place the best burdens in LA County are on our group because of our infrastructure, and the place the best advantages may happen,” Pestrella says. “We put a framework over our prioritization that included fairness. And with that fairness framework, we’re capable of determine the place is the largest bang for our buck” to profit communities economically and from a well being perspective.

Round 4,000 workers carry out quite a few disparate duties, from managing megaprojects such because the $1.7-billion Harbor-UCLA Medical Middle Substitute Program (high) to dealing with allowing, transportation (proper) and different municipal providers for unincorporated areas equivalent to Altadena.
Photographs courtesy LA County Public Works

“In just some quick years, InfrastructureLA has already begun to reap advantages,” Wiggins says. She cites “improved coordination and collaboration” on the 14.5-mi Southeast Gateway light-rail line, “figuring out options to advance that challenge by means of the environmental course of.” One other instance was when InfrastructureLA members offered “letters of help for grant functions for tasks of regional significance, like on our 710 Reimagining Program” which offers mobility enhancements—as a substitute of extra freeway lanes—between Alhambra and Pasadena.

“Mark had a imaginative and prescient centered round fostering collaboration throughout the area, bringing collectively stakeholders, cities, companies and the most important infrastructure gamers in LA County,” provides Wiggins. “Previous to that, we have been just about siloed in our method. Due to his imaginative and prescient, we’re now on the desk collectively, collaborating, figuring out options to a few of our largest infrastructure challenges at this time.”

InfrastructureLA has introduced greater than $2 billion in funding to the area, says Public Works’ George-Moody. “A few of the tasks are related to power enhancements and others with greenhouse gasoline, so we’ve been capable of leverage fairly a little bit of funding all through the area that may help lots of the resiliency and sustainability tasks which can be proposed for the upcoming years.”

Adams says Pestrella was additionally the driving drive in getting signatories for the Fairness in Infrastructure Mission pledge, designed to make sure inclusive procurements that enhance engagement with small and native companies to execute the mounting infrastructure work wanted for reconstruction and to arrange for the 2028 Olympics.

Winter storms introduced flooding and created particles flows by means of fire-damaged areas, requiring additional remediation (left). Public Works crews in Altadena (proper) restore essential infrastructure to permit residents again into their properties.
Photographs courtesy LA County Public Works

At an occasion produced by ENR for InfrastructureLA in 2023, 14 of the area’s largest public-private infrastructure entities, from LA Metro to Los Angeles World Airports to AECOM, signed the pledge.

“It’s by no means about him, however he has been the glue that has introduced so many companies collectively,” Adams says. “You want somebody who’s a champion of bringing collectively folks as a staff, creating that camaraderie and that working spirit. Mark represents that each single day.”

Different areas have begun to emulate InfrastructureLA’s components. Terri Mestas, former Los Angeles World Airports chief improvement officer and group consultant, joined Seattle’s Sound Transit in 2024 as deputy CEO for megaproject supply, managing about $54 billion in future infrastructure work. “I used to be so excited in regards to the work we did at InfrastructureLA that I pitched the thought to the Port [of Washington] and to WSDOT [Washington State Dept. of Transportation] … they usually mentioned, ‘we’re all in. Let’s work out how we will get this achieved,’” she says.

Pestrella additionally extends his advocacy for public service to the broader business. “Mark is deeply dedicated to collaboration, sustainability, group service and advancing the occupation. He’s a longstanding member of ASCE and a wide range of different skilled societies, and he’s not a passive member,” says Tom Smith, ASCE government director. “He serves on boards. He chairs committees. He’s at all times striving for collaboration, and he’s actually doing lots of the frontline work.”

In 2021, crews fast-tracked a brand new Mulholland Freeway Bridge to exchange the one destroyed in 2018’s Woolsey Fireplace.
Picture courtesy LA County Public Works

Pestrella at present chairs ASCE’s Trade Leaders Council, which Smith describes as a “staff of 30 senior leaders from business, academia and authorities that determine rising business challenges and tendencies impacting civil engineering, in addition to progressive approaches and options to those challenges. Below Mark’s management, the ILC companions with ASCE to drive change within the business and the occupation on a worldwide foundation.” [ENR’s Blair serves on the council.]

Final November, Pestrella was once more tried by hearth, this time within the dwelling the place he lives along with his spouse and two sons in Ventura County in the course of the Mountain Fireplace. He barely saved it from being completely burned down by staying behind to battle the flames with one in every of his sons. However heavy injury required the household to maneuver out for a year-long transform.

“I’m at present a participant, an observer and [responding to] a fireplace incident,” says Pestrella, an unlucky “trifecta” that he shares with many native residents. “It’s one thing that all of us acknowledge as a fantastic stress.”

However simply days after the November hearth, Pestrella was not solely working across the clock at Public Works serving to others in want, he additionally hosted a beforehand scheduled ILC visioning symposium in his places of work. “Mark chaired the complete two-day assembly with a deep dedication to guage the present state of America’s infrastructure, and to determine and advocate a set of high priorities to ASCE Board of Path to advance over the approaching yr and past,” Smith says.

However the largest focus for Pestrella now stays the restoration and rebuild from January’s fires, which he’s main with the Military Corps and native entities.

A few week after the fires began, Military Corps Main Basic Kimberly M. Colloton met with Pestrella to “ higher perceive, from his perspective, the LA County roles, tasks and plans” on the similar time the Corps was assessing what its position can be within the restoration. “Mark completely is a trusted associate, and understanding firsthand from Mark how he noticed the scenario unfolding and the place he felt he wanted help actually helped me set the muse for informing the remainder of the staff members that we might ultimately deliver on.”

Main Basic Jason E. Kelly, who’s now main the cleanup effort for the Corps, says that by working along with Pestrella and Public Works, “we improve resilience, enhance infrastructure and serve communities with a shared dedication to innovation and public security.”

The Corps is managing removing of 4.5 million tons of particles from the 9,000 particular person properties within the Eaton Fireplace space and 6,000 heaps in Palisades. Public Works, because the constructing official for Altadena and unincorporated areas, in partnership with LA and Malibu, will set requirements for the reconstruction.

Pestrella additionally used his connections to “invite each personal and public utilities to return in to speak about how we’re going to rebuild these areas, and do it in a resilient, trendy method,” he says. “It’s our probability to right lots of the actually poor utility building from the previous.”

Pestrella speaks to new engineers becoming a member of Public Works in the course of the January fires.
Picture by Scott Blair/ENR

Pestrella checking in with LA County Fireplace Chief Anthony Marrone and Military Corps Main Basic Colloton on the Eaton Fireplace in Altadena.
Picture by Scott Blair/ENR

Boarding a helicopter to examine essential infrastructure after the Woolsey Fireplace.
Picture courtesy LA County Public Works

Pestrella representing Public Works to media.
Picture courtesy LA County Public Works

Photographs courtesy LA County Public Works
*Click on on the images for larger element

However, “the challenges are huge,” he provides. “For these within the business that haven’t seen this, I problem you to return and perceive the size.”

On the partnering conferences, “I’ve seen Mark’s attributes as a frontrunner, the place he leans into the belief and respect that individuals have for him,” says Maryam Brown, CEO of SoCalGas, the nation’s largest pure gasoline distribution utility. Throughout one such assembly, Pestrella emphasised that the fires have been a profession occasion for a lot of working in public service. “The message that he was delivering was that ‘you all have younger people who report back to you. They’re watching you. They’re watching how it’s that you simply handle this hearth, and that’s going to form them for the remainder of their careers … as a result of they’re going to be in your footwear someday,’” Brown says.

As Pestrella appears in the direction of a future the place he passes the torch to Public Works’ subsequent chief, he intends to bake in collaboration and partnering to the company construction. He additionally hopes to ingrain within the subsequent technology his philosophy of public service.

“What did I do at this time or what am I going to do tomorrow that nobody will learn about, that may save somebody’s life or enhance their lives?” he asks himself. “All we now have in our life is time. Someplace alongside the road, that’s going to finish for me, so I’m making an attempt to get as a lot of these lives saved as I can earlier than I stroll out of right here.”