The Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners named deputy mayor S. David Freeman, veteran utility manager, as interim general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Freeman replaces H. David Nahai, who left to become a senior adviser at the Clinton Climate Initiative, an environmental group founded by former President Bill Clinton.
Freeman, an engineer and a lawyer, was head of the LADWP from 1997 to 2001 and has previously headed the New York Power Authority, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Lower Colorado River Authority, and the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District.
Until this week, he was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s deputy mayor for energy and environment.
The LADWP is an active municipal bond issuer with about $2.1 billion of long-term water system debt and $4.8 billion of long-term power system debt outstanding at the end of fiscal 2008.
The department is rushing to clean up its power portfolio and cut its reliance on coal, under orders from Villaraigosa and increasing state and federal environmental standards. It’s the lead agency in the Southern California Public Power Authority’s $140 million bond sale for the Linden Wind Energy project that’s coming to market this month.
LADWP itself plans to be back in the municipal market in November, when it sells about $470 million to $500 million of new-money water system revenue bonds, said Mario Ignacio, the utility’s assistant chief financial officer and treasurer.
He said the water bond issue will probably include the utility’s first Build America Bonds among long-dated maturities, but the exact structure will be decided closer to the time of issuance.
