The City of Oxnard’s (City) Public Works Department is facing many challenges in managing its future water resources and utilities. These challenges include responding to immediate drought conditions while also planning for long-term water needs, reducing dependence upon costly imported water, addressing aging infrastructure and reliability concerns, pursuing aggressive
goals for energy efficiency and sustainable solutions, maintaining compliance with changing regulatory requirements, and the on-going loss of seasoned staff and personnel. The City’s opportunities in meeting these challenges are varied and range from institutional and non-structural approaches (policies and programs) to technical and structural approaches (capital projects). Because of its broad authority, the City is also keenly aware of its unique opportunity to realize the benefits of optimizing both capital and operations and maintenance investments for all water utilities, street improvements and other City infrastructure.