Lupita Ortega coordinates with Communities Unlimited environmental staff in identifying regionalization opportunities and facilitating regionalization strategies and training for small community environmental management systems. In addition, Lupita provides technical assistance and training to community environmental management systems in rural areas of Texas experiencing operational, managerial, and/or regulatory compliance-related difficulties and problems.
She joined CU as a Hurricane Harvey contractor, providing disaster recovery technical assistance to small water and wastewater facilities in east Texas, before joining permanently as a Community Environmental Management Technician.

Before working with Communities Unlimited, she was an ombudsman with the Texas Office of the Secretary of State, facilitating communication among stakeholder groups such as local governments, non-profits, and funding agencies at a local, state, and federal level, to expedite the provision of basic services such as water, wastewater, drainage, roads, electricity and safe housing to colonias in Cameron county. Lupita worked with counties and state agencies to prevent the further proliferation of colonias by monitoring and assisting with compliance with colonia laws.

Lupita is certified member of the Texas Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and holds training certificates in National Disaster Preparedness and Recovery and Regionalization Flood Mitigation.

Track: TAP Skills: Regionalization
Title: Regionalization 101: Basics for Newer TAPs
Day/Time: Tuesday, 8/16 | 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Description: Regionalization is a challenging topic, and RCAP has built out a particular methodology, best practices, and set of values to help small systems be more sustainable and resilient through partnerships, big and small. The session, designed for newer TAPs and those with less experience with regionalization, will include an overview of how RCAP defines regionalization, hands-on sample activities that can be used with communities when implementing regional collaboration, case studies, lessons learned from the field, and the review of key tools and resources. Ohio RCAP team members will share their experience facilitating a bulk purchase agreement between neighboring communities. Highlights will include a description of the negotiation timeline, simple tactics to improve teamwork, pitfalls when aligning with SRF deadlines, and knowing your individual and collective role(s) as TA providers.