This story was originally printed in the Daily Post on Feb. 25. Since three of our competitors posted their own versions of this story yesterday, the Post decided to post the original. If you want the latest local news, pick up the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations.
(Read the report and Callender’s response)
BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Managing Editor
Valley Water CEO Rick Callender sexually harassed two female employees by sending inappropriate photos, pressuring them to spend time with him outside of work, including watering his house plants, and commenting on physical attributes of the women, according to documents released by the water agency yesterday.
Callender, who makes $716,000 a year, had been on paid leave for 14 months and on Friday, Valley Water announced he would retire as CEO on March 1 and stay on as a paid advisor for the next year at his current salary.
The district has agreed to pay Callender’s attorney’s fees in an amount not to exceed $65,000, according to the settlement agreement.
The board hired law firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Rudd and Romo to investigate both the sexual harassment complaints and allegations that Callender used Valley Water resources for NAACP-related tasks. Callender is the president of the California-Hawaii NAACP State Conference.
Callender’s response
Callender’s attorney, Lori Costanzo, sent a response to the investigation’s findings on Dec. 16. The rebuttal was also released along with the executive summaries of the investigations, as agreed upon in the settlement agreement.
“They mischaracterize his work, impugn his integrity without basis, and appear calculated to damage his reputation and undermine public confidence in Valley Water’s leadership,” Costanzo wrote.
Costanzo also said the accusations rely on “clear racial animus and stereotypical images of African American men.”
But the investigators found that Callender regularly gave “evasive, argumentative and sarcastic answers.” The investigators also wrote that some of Callender’s explanations for his actions “defied logic.”
Unwanted remarks
As for the sexual harassment claims, one employee provided the district with a list of occasions Callender made her feel uncomfortable, including:
• Sent her a photo of his clothed crotch,
• Asked the woman to water his tomatoes at his home while he was on vacation. When she went to his home to learn how to care for the plants, he hugged her without asking,
• Callender sent the woman photos of other women he was in relationships or flirted with,
• Made comments about her menopause-related symptoms,
• Made comments about her attire, including once telling her a dress “fit nicely,”
• When she wore high heels in the office, Callender allegedly asked her to move around so he could see the shoes better,
• Would take the employee with him when he ran errands, such as taking her to his girlfriend’s house to pick something up,
The second employee who complained about Callender had fewer allegations, but they mostly related to Callender trying to go to events, such as Sharks games, with the woman outside of work hours, which she found to be flirtatious.
Other allegations from the second woman included Callender regularly asking about the woman’s weekend or birthday plans, often hinting that he’d like to be invited to her “happy hour party.”
The investigation sustained many of the women’s sexual harassment complaints, but didn’t sustain complaints about Callender allegedly using Valley Water resources for the NAACP.
The only allegation related to the NAACP the investigators sustained was that Callender would use the district’s office to host NAACP events.
The agreement
As part of the settlement agreement, Callender cannot represent the district in any capacity unless expressly permitted by district officials. He will report to Board Chair Tony Estremera.
Estremera will grant Callender permission to attend meetings or events at the district offices. The board can end Callender’s stint as an advisor if he is found to be in breach of the settlement agreement or unsatisfactory performance.
The $716,000 salary figure includes an annual pension contribution of $167,000.
Instead of relying upon facts, this guy pulls out the race card to try and get out of trouble. Did he send those pictures to his female employees or not? That’s not a racial question. It involves tracing the origin of an email to text to its source.
Meanwhile, as a Palo Alto homeowner I have to pay a property tax to this district even though the city gets its water from Hetch-Hetchy.
And we don’t have a chance in hell of fixing these problems because our rep on the Valley Water board, Rebecca Eisenberg, is a lunatic who has done nothing to eliminate the fee we pay or stop CEO misbehavior.
Your property tax pays for flood protection, not water. You see those concrete channels around town, Adobe Creek, Matadero Creek, etc.? Who do you think built them and maintains them? If they stop maintaining them, they fill with sand and the neighborhoods flood again like they used to in the 50’s and before.
I don’t like Eisenberg either, but she’s been absolutely spot-on re the management and corruption of the organization.
That’s the propaganda Valley Water always puts out when people question their fee on their property tax bills. But take a minute and look at their 2025-26 budget, which is on their website. It calls for $948 million in spending. Flood protection accounted for only $132 million, or 14%. And that $132 million was spread out over several projects, most of them in the San Jose area, such as the Coyote Creek and the Alviso project.
Valley Water is supposed to be one of five partners in the Francisquito Creek Joint Powers authority, which was established to prevent floods of the creek. The other partners are the cities of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and San Mateo County.
When you look at these numbers, in the millions of dollars, you’re left positively underwhelmed by the fact that Valley Water only contributed $350,900 for the redesign of Reach 2 of the creek flood control project.
How did Valley Water spend the $948 million in its budget? 58% went toward procuring water for San Jose customers. Palo Alto gets its water from Hetch-Hetchy, so none of that money benefitted Palo Alto. But $8 million went toward “Managing Encampments of Unsheltered People.” And $102 million (or 10.7%) went to salaries and other overhead at Valley Water — that’s almost the amount they spend on flood prevention. In fact, it’s probably more than they contribute to prevention of flooding on Francisquito Creek.
Rebecca Eisenberg has had four years to fix these problems and nothing’s changed.
$716,000 annual salary???? What could he possibly do that would make a salary like that justified? Ridiculous to say the least. Valley Water you are insane!
He was so good at his job, they had to hire an actual engineer to be the assistant CEO, at another several hundred thousand $$$, for a new office created just to cover for his lack of knowledge …
I listened to the Valley Water employees today (March 10th), and I was happy to see them standing shoulder to shoulder to defend their female members from this kind of abuse. I was dismayed to see that many of them see Rebecca Eisenberg as a hero. If she had maintained the confidentiality of closed session meetings about the investigation, letting it run its course, the district would have been in a position to fire Callender under terms that felt more like justice. Instead, Eisenberg abused her position as a Director to spice up her Medium blog, compromising the investigation and leaving the district vulnerable to litigation. If Eisenberg wants to be a tabloid journalist, that’s fine, but she shouldn’t do it while representing District 7.
The board was too harsh in firing Callender. We all make mistakes. He has learned his lesson and deserves a second chance. Imagine yourself in his shoes. Wouldn’t you want a second chance?