Public Works Department

Akin Babatola

Wastewater Lab Environmental Compliance Manager

My work overseeing Environmental Compliance and the Wastewater Lab is a dynamic frontier. The pace of cultural transition in wastewater environmental programs and regulations is exciting. Given the rapidly changing frontier of environmental science, much is in flux regarding environmental health, regulations and resource management. The changes require some egg-breaking, and that is always painful.

I came to Public Works 12 years ago pulled by the fervent idea that transformational changes could be successfully achieved with mutual benefit to the City of Santa Cruz and my career. Ever since, I have enthusiastically leveraged the opportunities of my position to answer bigger questions for the City’s water environment. I enjoy finding solutions that are outside of the box. Indeed, this is necessary as the various City environmental health challenges often exceed the dictates of our regulatory limitations.

Outside of the lab, I play competitive games like speed scrabble and online chess. And I play ping-pong with gusto.

I am African and have a precocious 12-year-old who is an athletically gifted girl who teeters between academic excellence at times and insouciance at other times.

I am greatly concerned over the plight of northern Nigeria, my native country, and the ineffective response everywhere to the medieval and violent opponents of western education in general and of women’s education in particular.