Water Isn’t the Problem. Cost Is.

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Mike Collignon: Hello and welcome to the impact series on the Green Builder Media Network. I'm your host, my Collignon. On this podcast, I'll have one on one conversations with leaders and innovators from a wide variety of disciplines. We'll talk about how they got into their field, the lessons they've learned, and advice they have for future generations of leaders. Today I'm going to sit down with Deirdre Irwin.

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Mike Collignon: She is one of three water conservation coordinators for the Saint Johns River Water Management District, and oversees the Central Florida Water Initiative region. Deirdre has over 30 years of experience at the district. Her work involves administering the Florida Water Star program and assisting with training and outreach for the program. Deirdre works closely with district staff in the development of regional water supply plans, and coordinates a utility water conservation group that meets quarterly.

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Mike Collignon: Finally, she serves on the boards of the Florida Green Building Coalition and the Alliance for Water Efficiency, and Deirdre won a prestigious Water Star Award in 2024. Deirdre. Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Impact Series podcast.

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Deirdre Irwin: Thank you so much, Mike. I'm excited to be here.

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Mike Collignon: Now our listeners are going to pick up on your accent as we go. So let's start there. How does a woman from Ireland end up in Florida?

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Deirdre Irwin: I like to be a little bit cheeky and say, I did come on a plane, not a boat, but I won't. I won't go there today. So after I graduated from university, I had a green card to live and work in the States. And there really was a recession in Ireland. I would have had probably leave the country.

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Deirdre Irwin: So I decided I'd give the US a try. And I had a family friend in Florida who was the director of our Orlando office of the Saint Johns Water Management District or Regional Water Management Agency. And when an entry level position came along, he reached out to me. I said, okay, I'll come, I'll try it for a year, but I'm not staying longer than a year.

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Deirdre Irwin: And that was 1989, and I'm still here.

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Mike Collignon: But time flies when you're having fun, I guess.

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Deirdre Irwin: I've had a great career in the district.

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Mike Collignon: Oh, you have. And we're going to get into that career because it is really something that the people should know more about. But I know just from knowing you for years now that you've recently applied for U.S. citizenship. Now, how is that process going.

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Deirdre Irwin: While the application is in? And I received my first notification of getting having the biometrics interview. So that will be the first step. And then I'll get busy studying for the exam. And having raised three children in public school and helping them with social studies homework, I'm hoping I know most of this stuff, but I should have done this years ago.

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Deirdre Irwin: I just put it off and some kind of excited to be finally taking advantage of the opportunity.

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Mike Collignon: Yeah, I just I find it really interesting and fascinating and I wish you all the best in that process. And, you know, you're you move from the Emerald Isle to a peninsula and one can't help but have water as part of their lives. But you ended up in water conservation. So first of all, what drew you to conservation?

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Deirdre Irwin: Well, I started my career at the district, actually working in wetland regulatory programing. So I attended the University of Central Florida, took a whole bunch of biology classes and really fell in love with our natural systems in Florida, our wetland systems. So my first job was actually doing helping residents with permit determinations, sometimes enforcement cases, all related to wetlands.

00:04:11:24 - 00:04:39:25
Deirdre Irwin: And I did that for almost ten years in Central Florida. And then my husband's position at the district moved to our headquarters. So we had to move to North Florida. And I always loved the outreach and education component of my work dealing with the public. So a position came in our communications department working with primarily teachers, helping them teach about water resources in general.

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Deirdre Irwin: And I did that for maybe five years. And then this Florida water star thing came along, and they needed someone to run it full time. And as you know, a certification program is kind of like a blend of a regulatory rule and outreach and education. So, you know, I feel really fortunate. The timing was excellent for me to get involved with the program.

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Deirdre Irwin: That was technical, but really need a lot of outreach and education to the public and builders and the like. So then I transitioned into full time conservation and had to learn a lot about irrigation, which I didn't know very much about.

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Mike Collignon: Well, there's a lot of irrigation in Florida. Obviously, the lush landscapes that people kind of think in their mind when they think about Florida. You know, you're entering your 20th year now overseeing the Florida Water Star program and fun trivia fact for our listeners, Florida Water Star is the longest running water efficiency program in the United States.

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Mike Collignon: Yes, it does predate water sense. Let's start with if you could give us kind of an overview of the Water Star program.

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Deirdre Irwin: Sure. So I believe it was back around 2001 or 2. The certification movement was really gaining a lot of traction. And here in Florida, we had the Florida Green Building Coalition starting their efforts. We were pulled into assist with the water section. And at that time, our director of communications thought, you know, we should have our own program.

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Deirdre Irwin: So we got busy developing purely a water program, not looking at energy or any of the other components. And it takes time. We hired professors at UF and a few different entities to help us. Is the district had never done a third party certification program. We obviously have rules and all the rest, but not certification. So we got tremendous help from folks at us and from in particular Arlene Stewart, who has a lot of knowledge in that area.

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Deirdre Irwin: And we developed the criteria and the support documents of this program called Florida Water Star, targeted primarily at residential water use and targeted at new homes. So our target audience was builders and helping them build a home that was water efficient and low maintenance and that really a homeowner wouldn't even know their home was different or certified, just looked like a typical home, but had the potential to use a lot less water.

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Mike Collignon: Let's talk a little bit about the the builder element of that. Obviously, you've seen a shift over the 20 years as far as the builders reception to this type of a program. Can you talk a little bit about the early days and, you know, how was it perceived by various builders or builder groups that you met with?

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Deirdre Irwin: Okay. And if you remember back to that time period, certifications were new, the economy was booming. We're talking about 5 or 6 in the early part of seven, and builders were really looking for a way to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and to have something to show off that they're doing different. And and green building certification was the same with us.

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Deirdre Irwin: GBC leads programs, our Florida Green Building coalition, all we're doing extremely well. We had fabulous cooperation. We were involved in some of the international builders show that when I was in Orlando with the.

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Deirdre Irwin: Builders shown Orlando, those show homes were certified under our program also. So it was really good. National spotlight. And then. 0708 happened and there was the Great Recession. And suddenly builders were trying to survive. And not really, you know, stand out in the marketplace. They just wanted to survive. So we went from a trajectory going up, and people were voluntarily participating to suddenly nobody wanted to do Water Star.

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Deirdre Irwin: So those were some tough years. We did from the early days, always offer free inspections for not for profit builders. So those builders were still building during the recession. So we really branched out to some of the low income builders, you know, habitat for humanity, Saint John's Housing Partnership, those Florida based programs, and just continue doing our thing.

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Deirdre Irwin: We also expanded the program. So when it started, it was just the Saint Johns River Water Management District, which is one of five water management districts in the state of Florida, all or part of 18 counties. It's the hydrologic basin of the Saint Johns River, which flows from central well over by the coast and Indian River County all the way.

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Deirdre Irwin: It goes out into the ocean in Jacksonville. So we expanded to the other water management districts. We got agreements from them to also offer Florida water stores. So during that time it became a statewide program. We added Florida Water Star Gold. So a higher tier and Florida Water star commercial and industrial. So an commercial standard. So we were busy with program growth, program development.

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Deirdre Irwin: The builders were really instrumental in those early years. The Florida Homebuilders Association, the local chapters I worked with because we really wanted a program that was affordable and achievable by builders. We didn't, so they would review our early criteria and they're like, are you crazy? We're not doing all that extra stuff. And there were some items in there just we're not doing that at class too much.

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Deirdre Irwin: So they were extremely helpful and giving us feedback on what they wanted to know. Exactly. Why does this item save water and if it makes sense to them? They were willing to do it. So I would say the builders were really helpful in those early years.

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Mike Collignon: We're going to get into kind of the evolution of the program in just a little bit, but I think a lot of our listeners would be surprised to know that Florida has a little bit of a water quantity problem. I mean, yes, there's a lot of development and agriculture in the state, but but one big factor is sea level rise.

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Mike Collignon: You know, Florida's got a kind of a shallow water table. So some of your freshwater is becoming brackish, isn't it?

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Deirdre Irwin: We've got a few different things going on concurrently. So we have a state. And the good thing is we'll never run out of water. We just constrained on the cheap sources of water. But along our coastal areas, for decades now, we have had a sea level and infiltration issue with salt water coming in as the large well fields for the cities on the coast would continue drawing water from the Florida I may not prefer as the Florida, not for one of the most prolific in the world.

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Deirdre Irwin: It goes all the way up into the Carolinas and Georgia, and as the water became depleted in that aquifer, coastal saltwater would move in. So early on, several of our cities in the teens, and even in 7 or 8, they were starting to move wild fields inland. However, for the rest of Florida's central ridge of Florida continued to use the Florida and aquifer very successfully.

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Deirdre Irwin: And. But in recent years, with the increase in population, the increase in demands on water, our entire district is now a water caution area. So we have constraints on that traditional source. So 90% of our water comes from that Florida and aquifer. And so in our Florida legislature, which I kind of have to brag on a little bit, because it was very forward thinking at the time.

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Deirdre Irwin: And we have rules that related to water supply planning that if our water management district start observing impacts to natural systems caused by over pumping under the ground, so rivers, springs, lakes, if they start showing impacts, draw down water management districts must develop a water supply plan for that region. So we've got three regions Central Florida Water Initiative, the East Coast, Central Springs region and the Northeast Florida region, North Florida.

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Deirdre Irwin: And so our staff, a whole new group of staff, came on board and started working on these very detailed plans, which are required to for the next 20 years. They look at 20 years, determine how much water we're going to need, what the population growth is going to be, what the alternative sources could be, and that includes water conservation.

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Deirdre Irwin: What is the potential that we could achieve by. By doing what? Conservation. So that's when water conservation became really more a lot more important and quantifiable. And we started working with a lot of entities, figuring out what could be done, how best to implement programing. So we continue on with those water supply plans. I think it was in November.

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Deirdre Irwin: We updated every five years. We update those plans with new data and new models on water supply. And the Central Florida region got their plan approved in November, but it takes like two years to develop that plan with many stakeholder groups. And the aquifer doesn't know and political boundaries. So the Central Florida Water Initiative is a combination of South Florida, Southwest Florida Water Management District and Saint Johns.

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Deirdre Irwin: We all work together on this plan with all of our stakeholders, so it's a very in-depth approach. We also look at alternative sources. So one of the more successful ones in the last few years has been the lower Florida and aquifer. So underneath the Florida which we've used for forever, we have another aquifer. And we did research and drilled test wells into that aquifer in various locations to see.

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Deirdre Irwin: Was it brackish? Was it freshwater? And in many parts of our district it is freshwater. The wells are more expensive because they're much deeper, very in depth, could be 1000ft down. But that has become a very successful alternative source for Florida, as well as the use of treated wastewater or reclaimed what we call reclaimed water. Florida, I think, is one of the most prolific reclaimed water programs in the United States.

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Deirdre Irwin: The state DEP and the water management districts have heavily promoted reclaimed water in all of our local governments.

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Mike Collignon: And the alternative water. Yeah, no, because the alternative water part is, is interesting to me as well, because again, I think for the average person who isn't super familiar with Florida, they would think, wow, they get a fair amount of rain each year. He even get some hurricanes and they're surrounded by the, you know, by saltwater, which, you know, desal plants exist.

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Mike Collignon: And they've got, you know, the Everglades, they've got rivers. And you know what, what water problem would they have. But but yet you're not only attacking the water problem, but you're also just looking at it in some innovative ways. And as I do, you know, you know, I do work out West and in the southwest on this topic of water efficiency, water conservation.

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Mike Collignon: And I find it interesting that we can share ideas with Florida, which gets way more rain than many places out west. But yet you're looking at some of the very similar things that that they're looking at out there.

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Deirdre Irwin: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, because we have so much rainfall and the appearance of lots of water, it actually makes our job really difficult in water conservation because you have someone who just moved here, maybe from California, and they're like water restrictions. Why do I have water restrictions? We get 52in of rainfall every year, and we're surrounded by lakes and rivers and springs.

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Deirdre Irwin: Some of the most prolific springs in the world are in in Florida, in Central Florida. So there's there's an education, there's a story to be told to explain to them. And I have this one slide I use a lot with these raindrops and it's the cost of water. So there's the cost, our traditional source and all the news sources.

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Deirdre Irwin: So it's a money problem. It's not a water problem. We're not like Arizona and New Mexico. We have options. But they're just going to cost a little more. And Florida's feeling that a little bit now. And the other thing that happened, which is really worth mentioning a few years we had some surface water pollution issues. We had harmful algal blooms.

00:19:03:16 - 00:19:43:17
Deirdre Irwin: And along our coast and in our rivers really impacted tourism. So our state government got very active on writing legislation to prevent the. Historically, you've been allowed to put treated wastewater in surface water, rivers and the like. Once it was treated, it was disposed of. Now the rules are changing and by 2030 there will be no disposal. In natural systems are treated wastewater which parallels water supply really well because we need that source as an alternative supply.

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Deirdre Irwin: So we don't want it going. But the cheapest, easiest way was just to dispose of it. That's not going to be allowed. So for several years our our local governments and utilities have been preparing and using that that treated wastewater. So now in fact, we have several pilot projects in our district just piloting, getting all the kinks out of and potable reclaimed water.

00:20:10:15 - 00:20:39:22
Deirdre Irwin: So that is in the future. We have to do something with this source. And we have a shortage of, you know, potable water. So, you know, our utilities are looking at a few different approaches, maybe pumping it back down into the aquifer to withdraw, blended with aquifer water. Basically, the PR effort is on to eliminate the yuck factor to find.

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Mike Collignon: Yes. Yeah. That was something that was definitely an issue many years ago when this kind of innovative basins first started showing up. How much conversation is happening in Florida about groundwater recharge?

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Deirdre Irwin: It's definitely part of the conversation. We do see some utilities are recharging the aquifer with some of their reclaimed water, as opposed to putting it in a river lake. Well, it wasn't going in lake, so it was primarily in large river systems. And so there is there is replenishment of the aquifer. You know, we do get that 52in of rainfall.

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Deirdre Irwin: So built into a lot of our rules are to protect areas where recharge occurs along the central ridge. Very the aquifer and the limestone is very close to the surface, very well drained soils. So that is a natural recharge area in those areas. Really do see a lot of pressure to protect for recharge purposes.

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Mike Collignon: And I think for some of our listeners who may not be fully versed on water issues, you know, groundwater recharge is pretty important because you've got potential subsidence issues if you keep pumping water out of the ground and that mass isn't replaced, you can have those types of issues which can lead to structural failure or structural compromise, not just structures, but also roads, infrastructure, pipes.

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Mike Collignon: So it's it's something that you don't see, but it is pretty important to to keep an eye on and to maintain.

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Deirdre Irwin: So I think a lot of people in Florida are very aware of that potential, because sinkholes are very real and we don't even need to over pump in a drought situation where the aquifer reduces its levels, we often see sinkholes forming. So a lot of people in certain regions of Florida have additional homeowner insurance for sinkholes. And so that's definitely a very real part of our limestone geology here.

00:23:09:03 - 00:23:40:17
Mike Collignon: Now, the and I know this from working with you. So I hope you provide a little bit of context as you go into your answer on this one. The shift that you have seen from voluntary to mandatory in some areas of is fascinating to me, given the political proclivities in the Sunshine State. So what what drove that that shift or that change?

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Deirdre Irwin: I think a few different things might have encouraged some mandatory adoption of different components of water conservation. We have our. So something that's different about Florida's who authorizes permission to use water from the aquifer soulfully. There is an aspect to water law in Florida called Florida water law. That means the state of Florida regulates use of water from the aquifer.

00:24:08:28 - 00:24:51:11
Deirdre Irwin: So that's important to understand. First, that has been delegated to the water management districts who issue the permits to our local governments, utilities, agriculture, and large commercial even subdivisions all uses of water, reasonable and beneficial use of water from the aquifer. So we have very in-depth rules about how we allocate water from the aquifer. So as we started seeing constraints and as we had this, this water quality issue and some of our rules were improved or tightened up a little to mandate certain things happen.

00:24:51:11 - 00:25:25:08
Deirdre Irwin: So standard in Florida in your water use promise you have to do water conservation. So that is already built in. So that's in a way mandatory. And those requirements have become a little stricter in recent years. You have to do things like have a water conserving rate structure to encourage water conservation based on the cost of water, and you have to demonstrate that you're only using what you absolutely need based on our allocation.

00:25:25:08 - 00:25:53:03
Deirdre Irwin: So we look closely at the irrigated areas, the use of the water. We encourage our applicants to really look at ways they can recycle water on the site, and we use it. So I have a great example of that. We have a hospital in Northeast Florida, well known private hospital that takes low down water from their HVAC system and uses it to irrigate 72 acres of landscaping.

00:25:53:07 - 00:26:35:13
Deirdre Irwin: So those kinds of approaches are really encouraged through. So that's just regulatory permitting. Then as local governments started to see that water is becoming constrained. And, you know, our natural environment is so important in Florida. That's why people visit. That's why they want to live here. So local governments started adopting mandatory codes and ordinances requiring conservation, essentially. So a reduced use of water in the landscape and increased in the quality of the plants, the type of landscaping, all to promote water conservation.

00:26:35:14 - 00:27:00:02
Deirdre Irwin: So it was happening in a few different ways than programs like Florida. Water Star had become very accepted as a reasonable program that would we had a you have study that showed it actually does save water. Really important to know you're going to have the best program in the world. But if you don't get in there and quantify and document if it's implemented correctly, it can save water.

00:27:00:02 - 00:27:27:27
Deirdre Irwin: So we started seeing some local governments in Southwest Florida mandate Florida water store in their local code so that they could continue to grow. Essentially, they saw the writing on the wall that we do not have enough water in our permit to have continue with the growth, the bloom we're seeing in Florida. Therefore, we're mandating this highly respected program to allow girls to continue.

00:27:27:27 - 00:27:36:27
Deirdre Irwin: So that's been a recent over the last 5 to 7 years, been a big increase in that program. Now.

00:27:36:29 - 00:27:48:07
Mike Collignon: I want to go back to a question we were talking about earlier with this shift to more mandatory measures. How has that been received by the builders?

00:27:48:09 - 00:28:18:03
Deirdre Irwin: Well, it's funny, you know, Florida already has a very robust building code that they increase. They change every three years. And it's got a lot of energy requirements. So the building code makes for a level playing field. And we find that's what builders really want. The minute that local governments start adopting this code and this code and it gets really complex.

00:28:18:03 - 00:28:46:03
Deirdre Irwin: So with that water quality issue, we started seeing a whole lot of local governments adopting fertilizer ordinances. I'm not going to get into details. I'm not an expert in fertilizer, but there was a belief that they weren't all appropriate. And some of the researchers at the University of Florida didn't agree with some of these ordinances. So residents were having to deal with when they could apply fertilizer.

00:28:46:03 - 00:29:17:19
Deirdre Irwin: And then builders were dealing with a variety of codes mandated by their local government on how they could build our home. With regard to the landscaping component, and I would say it has not been in recent years. We sent a lot of frustration, and I totally understand you could be in that Central Florida area and depending on your local government, have an entirely different way of installing your landscape.

00:29:17:21 - 00:29:38:17
Deirdre Irwin: So in our conversations, we have been having discussions with the Florida Builders Association. They really do want a level playing field. They understand the need. They know there's constraints on water. They obviously want to keep building. And so what I'm hearing from them is they're hoping that we can figure out a way to just have a level playing field.

00:29:38:17 - 00:29:43:10
Deirdre Irwin: So everyone is being treated the same way.

00:29:43:12 - 00:29:56:09
Mike Collignon: And what about has there been any feedback or have you gathered any kind of input or reaction, maybe from homeowners or home buyers?

00:29:56:12 - 00:30:25:26
Deirdre Irwin: Very little. I couldn't care less. So a lot of people moving to Florida have never had an irrigation system. So they they just and all of our new communities are laid restricted. So they, trust me, are more afraid of their home than me. So we'll do whatever it takes to keep their new Florida landscape looking good so they don't get that letter from the ho.

00:30:25:29 - 00:30:57:15
Deirdre Irwin: And so we partner heavily with the extension service, with the university, the Florida friendly landscaping program, and what all reaching out to hose and homeowners to help them have an attractive landscape and use less water. So it's it definitely takes a village to to to get to those new homeowners to tell them you have water restrictions. Overwatering your grass is not going to make it look better.

00:30:57:15 - 00:31:03:24
Deirdre Irwin: It'll look worse. And you have to stay within the irrigation restrictions.

00:31:03:24 - 00:31:16:14
Mike Collignon: So because that was that was something that just kind of came to mind for me was you said, okay, they get 52in of rain a year. Is there indeed for an irrigation system?

00:31:16:16 - 00:31:42:22
Deirdre Irwin: Well, unfortunately we don't get an even application of water from the sky. We have a dry season and usually the winter is our dry season. And this really spring, our rainy season is in the summer, so you can reduce your irrigation water use dramatically in the summer months when your landscape needs it. Because we get these a lot of rainfall.

00:31:42:26 - 00:32:16:03
Deirdre Irwin: The tough time really is February, March, April when we're getting, you know, maybe a half inch to an inch in a month and everything is suddenly blooming, the temperature has gone up and there just isn't enough water. So it really is for, of course, you can have a landscape with no irrigation, but your plants may struggle during those months, so it has become the norm now to install an automatic irrigation system in every new home.

00:32:16:05 - 00:32:47:02
Deirdre Irwin: Hence our problem with water, because there's these irrigation systems educating the homeowner that you really experience that dry season, you need to run it. You can turn it off in the summer quite often. And we have dormancy. And we have one community in North Florida that kept getting really high water bills because the grass went dormant and brown, and they were trying to bring it back to life all winter.

00:32:47:04 - 00:32:54:04
Deirdre Irwin: They're like, This is Florida. The grass should be green on here. Well, in North Florida is not it does go dormant.

00:32:54:06 - 00:33:02:05
Mike Collignon: Right. And that's a natural part of the plants is to go dormant. It's not you know. Oh no it's it's a horrible thing.

00:33:02:06 - 00:33:30:11
Deirdre Irwin: It's not dying. It's just going to it's sleeping. Don't water it. But now in central and south Florida it will stay green all year round. So we don't have that. So so it's a complex problem and hose complicated further. They're not always informed on what is the you know they might be informed on the esthetics of the landscape but not necessarily on the regional constraints.

00:33:30:11 - 00:34:00:00
Deirdre Irwin: So one thing we started doing several years ago is offering a free webinar to hose with Sears quarterly to teach the people who manage these large communities about efficient irrigation. And it's been really successful. We've had get 60 or 70 people every quarter attending, and they come back again and again because there's a lot of information packed in that are okay.

00:34:00:05 - 00:34:13:02
Mike Collignon: I don't think struggles with a would be anything foreign to any of our listeners. We deal with that on a variety of fronts and obviously water being one of them.

00:34:13:04 - 00:34:42:07
Mike Collignon: So you're you're nearing retirement, which many in the water efficiency industry are sad to hear. And, you know, we're going to miss you when you do retire. So we're not wishing that anytime soon. But you are. You are approaching retirement. There's a process there in the state of Florida. As you reflect on your career. What do you want the next generation to really take to heart?

00:34:42:09 - 00:35:03:23
Deirdre Irwin: Well, I think I've seen an evolution from water conservation being this fluffy thing. You feel good thing we'd have a booth, we'd buy some bags or some rain gauges to being a really significant component of long term water supply planning. And.

00:35:03:25 - 00:35:28:25
Deirdre Irwin: How we achieve that and how we quantify that is very challenging. But what I have learned and where I've been most successful is by pulling in as many stakeholders as I could. So I run this, we jokingly call it a support group for people who do water conservation. And so it's all of our utilities and local governments. We have probably about 60 or 70 people on that email list.

00:35:28:26 - 00:35:54:09
Deirdre Irwin: And if you think about it, are you told you might have 1 or 2 people who do conservation full time and they're not the most popular people in the utility because they're if they're really good at what they do. They're impacting revenue. So this is a group. It's a safe place where you can come and talk about your feelings about water conservation, and it's very empowering for them.

00:35:54:09 - 00:36:19:18
Deirdre Irwin: Every time we do it, a different utility hosts it, and they've gotten really competitive wanting to host it. And it's created a network in Central Florida. And actually our whole district where you can be very proud of what you do and you get to call out your successes in this meeting. So pulling people in, having those conversations is so important.

00:36:19:21 - 00:36:53:22
Deirdre Irwin: And the builders, same thing, taking the time to go to those local chapters of the home associations, learning from them. These guys are building houses every day. They often have really good ideas. All of the other groups, the professional organizations. And then not to forget civic organizations like Rotary Chambers of Commerce, all of those folks, and wherever possible, pulling people in to educate them and listen to them.

00:36:53:24 - 00:37:16:04
Deirdre Irwin: And so I would say, over the course of my career, I've learned that more than more than anything else is the importance of our stakeholders and listening to them and staying up to speed on all of the things that are happening around the country and and products like your Green Builder magazine and all of the online resources are fabulous.

00:37:16:04 - 00:37:37:13
Deirdre Irwin: LinkedIn I learned so much about programs around the country through LinkedIn and is really important to. So I think they would be some of the more significant things. And just accepting that you don't know everything all the time and being always willing to learn.

00:37:37:16 - 00:37:42:16
Mike Collignon: And have people around you who are, you know, just as smart, if not smarter to.

00:37:42:23 - 00:37:57:03
Deirdre Irwin: Work with some really smart people. And we have a lot of good exchange within the water management district from some of these experts in modeling and geology and biology and all the rest.

00:37:57:06 - 00:37:59:12
Mike Collignon: I'm thankful I get to work with a smart person like you.

00:37:59:12 - 00:38:05:21
Deirdre Irwin: So I'm learning every day.

00:38:05:23 - 00:38:12:06
Mike Collignon: Well, it's always a pleasure, Deirdre. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast. We really appreciate it.

00:38:12:09 - 00:38:17:05
Deirdre Irwin: Thank you so much for inviting me back. This has been a lot of fun.

00:38:17:07 - 00:38:24:10
Mike Collignon: Stay tuned for more episodes of the Impact Series podcast on the Green Building Media Network. I'm Mike Collignon and I'll see you again soon.