Message from Clay Rahn, President of RMWEA January 2025
The “New” in New Year
Clay Rahn, RMWEA PresidentHappy New Year to all of you water professionals! While it is true that I am excited for what the future holds in 2025, I would first like to mention a few of the great things that our very own RMWEA members accomplished during October’s WEFTEC in New Orleans. Metro Water Recovery’s Elevated Ops team won the overall national title (first place in Division 1) at the Operations Challenge competition! This was their third national title since 2019! It was such a pleasure watching that well-oiled machine execute their events so flawlessly and swiftly. Their techniques remind me of those executed during a NASCAR or Indycar pit-stop: if you blink, you miss it! Double Duty, also from Metro, won 3rd place in Division 1 for the Lab Event. Quite a haul for Metro!
Westminster’s Sewerside Squad and South Platte Renew’s Commode Commandos also competed at WEFTEC at the highest levels, putting an exclamation point on RMWEA’s dominance at this prestigious, national event. And to cap it all off, a documentary film featuring RMWEA’s regional competition (video services provided by our friends at Garver) was selected for the World Water Film Festival and may possibly win an award! At the time of this writing, the news was hot off the press, so I don’t have many details to share here. But over the next months I will be keeping an eye out for how the film does! The film is featured on our website, rmwea.org. Of course, you will want to view it and you can do so by hovering over the “Operations Challenge” tab on homepage, and then click on “Regional – RMWEA”. Scroll down and voila! The video will be available for viewing there!
Now that we are through the RMWC, WEFTEC, and the holidays – what many think of (myself included) as the busiest time of the year – I find myself with a little more free time which opens up my ability to imagine what could be for 2025. My mind wonders to a place where I think about new, exciting possibilities: all the new people that will be met; newrelationships that will be built or built upon; tackling new work challenges that spur professional growth; travel to new, exciting destinations; taking on that new Ironman course in Pennsylvania (or maybe that’s just me) and of course all the new effort that will go into furthering the already 89 years of RMWEA causes.
Speaking of those RMWEA causes, we have such amazing volunteers who continuously create wonderful spaces for these causes: spaces that foster learning, networking and enjoyment – the fulfillment of RMWEA’s mission. So, I encourage you to try something new in 2025. Maybe that’s attending a Young Professionals’ event (their events are for everyone…even us Old Unprofessionals!), or a PWO Seminar, or one of our operator schools (shameless plug: The Fundamentals School will be January 20-24 and the Intermediate/Advanced School will be March 10-14, both at the Delta Hotel in Northglenn, CO), or an IWT Seminar, or the Communications Seminar, or maybe attending the RMWC for the first time, just to name a few. I encourage it all! Experience as much new as you can both personally and professionally in 2025; it will go by quickly.
For me, I look forward to serving RMWEA to the very best of my ability and attending as many new (to me) events that I can possibly attend, working smarter and harder at my job, furthering my own health goals with the aforementioned Ironman race in Pennsylvania and loving my loved ones even more.
Thank you again for allowing me to serve you in 2025. I most definitely wish you and your loved ones a wonderful year ahead!