The new face of the Metropolitan Water District
On June 9, the district’s 38-member board selected a new General Manager not of the traditional mold: Adel Hagekhalil. Hagekhalil is of course an engineer—that’s a given. He is also an immigrant who arrived from Lebanon in 1984 with, he says, two bags to his name. His skills and passion led him through a series of jobs under five LA mayors that would not, ordinarily, seem to groom him for the Met. He served a stint as director of StreetsLA; he spent almost a decade as assistant director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation.