People Behind the Plans: Commissioner Josina Morita

The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world's supply of surface
freshwater. When urban planner Josina Morita moved from California,
where a mentality of scarcity around water dominates, to Chicago,
where the opposite is true, it got her thinking: How can we be good
stewards of the Great Lakes, one of our most precious natural
resources? How can we keep ourselves accountable to the rest of the
country and the world? Josina now serves as Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD),
which manages stormwater and sewer water for Cook County, Illinois.
But the organization also sees themselves as an environmental
agency, and they pilot exciting new green technologies at many of
their plants. Josina describes several of them in the episode and
the promising ways they're advancing the industry, saying, "The
last thing anybody thinks about is drinking their own sewer water,
but the technology is there, and water is becoming its own
renewable resource." She and Courtney also discuss how budgets are
a reflection of a community's values, why taxes make all the
difference in a community's infrastructure, as well as Josina's
passion for racial equity and making sure everyone has a seat at
the table.