The CEO of Silicon Valley’s largest water agency, a longtime water manager who also serves as president of the California-Hawaii NAACP, resigned Friday following a year-long misconduct investigation during which he had threatened to sue the agency.
Rick Callender, who has worked for the Santa Clara Valley Water District since 1996, and served as its CEO since 2020, will step aside on March 1 and work for one year as an advisor reporting to the district’s board chairman, Tony Estremera.
In the new job, Callender will continue to earn his current salary of $520,000 a year plus benefits until agreeing to step down March 1, 2027.
The district, a government agency also known as Valley Water, provides drinking water and flood protection to 2 million residents in Santa Clara County. It is funded by water charges and taxes.
After a two-hour closed session meeting Friday, the district’s board voted 6-1 to approve the agreement. Board member Rebecca Eisenberg voted no.
Following the meeting, Estremera characterized the vote as a compromise in the district’s best interest.
“You can have everybody suing everybody instead of providing services to the public,” Estremera said. “We have to balance that out. Do we want to spend the next five years in litigation as part of these varying disputes? We’ve always try find a balance.”
Callendar said he had done nothing wrong.
“I was planning on retiring at the end of 2025,” he said. “I stayed on to clear my name.”
Callender went on leave in December 2024, after a female employee filed a complaint against him. Two other female employees filed complaints afterward. Neither the board nor Callender have disclosed publicly what the nature of the complaint was.
In January 2025, Calender turned the tables when his attorney, Lori Costanzo of San Jose, sent a letter to the district requesting a copy of his personnel file and threatening to sue the agency for “hostile work environment, discrimination, retaliation and more.”
While on leave, Callender has continued to receive his full salary for the past 14 months as the district’s 7-member elected board hired outside a legal firm, Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, based in Cerritos, to investigate the allegations.
The water district’s counsel, Carlos Orellana, also hired a crisis communications company, Progress Public Affairs, based in San Francisco, during the saga.
Estremera said Friday that the final investigative report will be released next week.
“The investigation is completed,” he said. “We have reports that we are going to be redacting to protect the privacy of the witnesses. We’re going to complete that at our next meeting on Tuesday, so we can allow for the release of those records.”
Asked what the general conclusion of the investigation was, Estremera said, “I don’t want to get ahead of the report. I’ll let it speak for itself.”
Eisenberg, the water district board member who represents Palo Alto, has clashed frequently with Callender and other board members. Last year, she posted several items on Medium, a publishing website, saying that Callender was being investigated for sexual harassment.
Last March, she wrote: “After the first Valley Water victim came forward last October, other victims followed. So, the top executive of Valley Water is currently facing multiple credible, serious, written-evidence-backed allegations of serial predatory behavior against multiple victims over the course of more than a decade. The fact of these investigations, which are based on multiple victim complaints, with a voluminous amount of written evidence, is clearly information that the public deserves to know.”
“Allowing the top executive who has been accused of such terrible behavior by so many people to go on voluntary paid vacation is not a consequence. It is unjust enrichment.”
Callender, 55, said he was wrongfully accused by an employee who lashed out after she was facing discipline, and who was then supported by the union.
“There was no veracity to the complaint,” he said. “I’m not retiring as a result of any of the findings. All of the accusations lacked truthfulness.”
Esteremera said that Melanie Richardson, the district’s current interim CEO, will remain on while the board searches for a permanent replacement.
The secrecy surrounding Callender’s status over the past year — and the continued unanswered questions from the agency’s board and staff — drew criticism Friday.
“Our members who complained about the harassment still haven’t learned the outcome of the investigation and neither have we,” said Salam Baqleh, vice president of the Valley Water Employees Association, the union representing many of the agency’s 880 workers.
“It’s appalling that he will stay on as a special consultant and our members are still in the dark after more than a year,” she added. “This is ratepayer money.”
Callender was named CEO in 2020 after a 4-3 board vote in closed session, succeeding retiring CEO Norma Camacho. The vote made Callender, who had spent much of his career at the district in government affairs and public relations, the first African-American CEO of the water district and one of the most high-ranking African-American water leaders in the United States.
A Las Vegas native, he grew up in San Jose and graduated from Santa Teresa High School in 1988. He earned a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering and technology from California State University, Chico in 1994. Around that time, he also worked as a campaign organizer for the California Democratic Party during Kathleen Brown’s gubernatorial campaign, and as a congressional fellow in the office of former Oakland Rep. Ron Dellums.
From 1995 to 1996, Callender worked as a special assistant to former San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer and was hired at the water district in 1996. He served as president of the San Jose-Silicon Valley NAACP from 2000 to 2008, and stepped down to attend law school. Callender graduated from Northwestern California University School of Law and, in recent years, has served as president of the California-Hawaii NAACP State Conference.