The second-highest-paid Little Rock government employee is returning home to South Carolina after more than 8½ years at the helm of Central Arkansas Water.
Graham Rich, chief executive officer of the water agency since April 2007, spent his last day in that role Friday. He is headed to Greenville, S.C., where he will lead the Renewable Water Resources utility.
A packed boardroom of city officials and others gathered Thursday afternoon for a farewell party for Rich, who already had his office belongings packed up in white boxes.
Roby Robertson, chairman of the water agency's governing commission, told the crowd that executive relationships with the commission are not always perfect, but the relationship with Rich "truly has been ideal."
He called Rich "a straightforward guy who always says it like it is."
Rich had previously told Robertson that he was in Little Rock to stay, with the caveat that he would consider a few jobs in South Carolina if they were to open, Robertson said.
"He came up to me and said, 'I need to tell you who called,' and I used a word I won't repeat, because I knew that was pretty much it," Robertson said of when Rich announced his departure.
Rich was the second leader of Central Arkansas Water after it was created in 2001 by merging the Little Rock and North Little Rock water utilities. His pay was $198,286 a year -- the city's second-highest salary, behind that of the Little Rock airport chief.
The water commission has appointed the agency's attorney, Tad Bohannon, as interim chief executive officer. It also increased Bohannon's $170,000 pay by 5 percent while he's serving in the interim position.
When the commission hired Rich in 2007, it used a national search firm and went through 30 candidates. The commission likely will search locally this time, but it will discuss its options during its meeting this month, Robertson said.
"The obvious answer is we feel really good about Tad and his strengths, but we are going to stay with the interim for short term and fairly quickly announce a search and move forward. We probably will not go with any sort of national search because we feel like we have a strong local candidate here, and there may be others," he said.
Bohannon has been the agency's full-time counsel for almost two years, and before that he served as an outside legal adviser in some form for more than 20 years as a partner with the Wright, Lindsey and Jennings law firm.
Rich spoke highly of Bohannon and his ability to do the job.
"When we brought Tad on board as legal counsel, I kind of had a more long-term view of his involvement in the utility," Rich said. "Tad has an extremely analytical mind. He's extremely bright and well-knowledged in, obviously, utility law and utility public policy issues. I think he will bring hopefully somewhat of a different approach than I brought here, which I think change is always good."
Rich recently saw the utility through the approval of a round of rate increases. An average water customer's rates will rise by 8.9 percent in 2017 and 2018, partly to pay for a pipe replacement program.
"This is the No. 1 priority. We don't want Central Arkansas Water to go through what's you've seen all over the country where there are consent decrees where utilities are mandated to have to fix things in a very short time period. We want to get ahead of that," Rich said. "We do have old infrastructure, aging infrastructure. I think that, in my opinion, moving forward is probably the top initiative. Right next to continuing watershed protection."
The agency first hired Rich as it was on the brink of figuring out how to implement a protection plan to limit residential development near Lake Maumelle, the region's primary water source. It took years to get Pulaski County to adopt the plan, which changed throughout the process.
Central Arkansas Water serves nearly 400,000 people.
Rich, who began working at the utility having never before visited Arkansas, said Thursday that he's leaving behind the best group of co-workers he's ever had.
"Some people think I just say this, but I truly mean it," he said. "I've worked at a lot of different places -- in Ohio, for a number of utilities in South Carolina -- and I will say without question this is the best I've ever worked for and by far the best staff I've ever worked with."
Metro on 01/11/2016