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SFPUC General Manager Dennis Herrera Announces Retirement After Nearly 25 Years of Public Service

Dennis Herrera and Mayor Lurie speaks at the San Francisco Fire Department, in coordination with the SFPUC and other partner agencies, conducted a live Emergency Firefighting Water System (EFWS) demonstration

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
June 23, 2026

SFPUC Contact: 
communications@sfwater.org

SFPUC General Manager Dennis Herrera Announces Retirement After Nearly 25 Years of Public Service

Herrera will retire in December after almost 20 years as City Attorney and five years leading the SFPUC

SAN FRANCISCO – Dennis J. Herrera, the General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and one of the longest-serving City Attorneys in San Francisco history, announced today he will retire in December.  The timing of the announcement was designed to support a smooth transition and provide Mayor Daniel Lurie and the SFPUC Commission time to find his replacement. 

“This decision comes with a mix of emotions,” SFPUC General Manager Dennis Herrera said. “It has been the greatest honor of my professional life to serve the people of this city. San Franciscans are smart, compassionate, and resilient. It has been an incredible privilege to serve alongside so many dedicated people across San Francisco to help make our city even better. I will always cherish that, but now is the right time to start a new chapter in life.”

“Dennis Herrera has dedicated his life to serving San Francisco,” said  Mayor Daniel Lurie. “Thanks to his work as city attorney and at SFPUC, our city is fairer and healthier. Dennis brings almost unparalleled institutional knowledge across government, and with his retirement, the city is losing someone who has put that knowledge to work for San Franciscans for more than three decades." 

A maritime lawyer by trade, Herrera began his public service as a member of the Waterfront Plan Advisory Board for the Port of San Francisco in 1990. Then-Mayor Willie Brown appointed him to the San Francisco Public Transportation Commission in 1996 before tapping him for the San Francisco Police Commission in 1997.

Building a Legal Champion
Herrera was elected San Francisco City Attorney in December 2001 and held that post for nearly 20 years, winning re-election five more times. He was the first Latino elected as City Attorney in San Francisco’s history. Herrera built one of the premier municipal law offices in the country, attracting and cultivating top talent to provide San Francisco with an unrivaled civil legal team that also proactively brought cases to benefit the people of California.

Groundbreaking Cases
As City Attorney, Herrera’s guiding principle was using the power of the law to better people’s lives. Under his leadership, the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office led the way on marriage equality, consumer protection, housing, preventing gun violence, and defending democracy, among many other issues: 

  • Marriage equality - The City Attorney’s Office under Herrera holds the unique distinction of being the only legal team to be involved in every phase of the legal fight for marriage equality in California. The office was a party in every case, in every court, before every judge from early 2004 to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark rulings in June 2013 that legalized same-sex marriage in California.
  • Defending democracy - Herrera played a key role in protecting the country against the unlawful overreach of the first Trump administration, including:
    • Sanctuary cities - Herrera in 2017 brought the first lawsuit in the nation against President Donald Trump over his executive order threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from sanctuary cities and other local and state governments. The trial court ruled in San Francisco's favor, finding Trump's executive order unconstitutional and ordering a nationwide halt to enforcement of it. The federal government appealed that ruling and lost. The legal victory protected more than $1 billion in funding for San Francisco, and billions more for cities and counties across the country. The vast majority of that funding goes to help vulnerable populations with things like health care, nutrition and other safety net programs. 
    • Food and health care for immigrant families - The City and County of San Francisco and Santa Clara County in 2019 jointly filed the first case to block a U.S. Department of Homeland Security rule designed to scare immigrant families into foregoing food, housing, and healthcare help that they rely on. (It was called the “public charge” rule.) Attempting to upend nearly 140 years of legal precedent, the Trump administration sought to radically expand the grounds upon which a person could be deemed likely to become a “public charge,” and thus denied a green card or entry into the United States. The rule would have instituted a wealth test for immigrants entering the United States or going through the naturalization process. The rule also would have coerced individuals to forgo or withdraw from critical public benefits and care. It was designed to end the American dream as we know it. It was not only illegal, it was un-American, and it was defeated in court. 
    • Access to health care for women and LGBTQ+ community - Herrera in 2019 was also the first to sue the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services to invalidate a new federal rule that would have allowed health care staff to refuse to provide medical treatment to people, even in emergencies. At its core, this so-called “conscience rule” was about denying people medical care. This administration was willing to sacrifice patients’ health and lives — particularly those of women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and low-income families — to score right-wing political points. The intent of the rule was to prioritize religious beliefs over patient care, undermining access to contraception, abortion, HIV treatment and a host of other medical services. It was designed to drag our country back to 1940s health care. It was defeated in court.  
  • Housing - In August 2006, Herrera sued rental property behemoth CitiApartments for unlawful business practices and tenant harassment, alleging the company had a pattern of anti-competitive practices and forcing out rent-controlled tenants to charge higher rents for the same units. The subsequent settlement reached in March 2011 included penalties of up to $10 million. It helped put the predatory company out of business.
    • Herrera successfully defended San Francisco's short-term rental regulations from legal challenge by Airbnb and HomeAway and secured a settlement in May 2017 that requires the companies to ensure that listings on their site comply with San Francisco law, protecting rent-controlled apartments from being used as de facto hotels.
  • Consumer Protection - After filing litigation against predatory payday lenders Money Mart and Check 'n Go on April 26, 2007, Herrera forced them to repay 10,000 California consumers $7.7 million and forgive another $8 million in debt.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
In April 2021, then-Mayor London Breed nominated Herrera to lead the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission after the agency’s former general manager was charged in federal court with corruption and resigned. Herrera took the helm at the SFPUC on November 1, 2021.

Under his leadership, San Francisco’s work to expand public power gained momentum and made significant progress. San Francisco won multiple cases against PG&E at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, advanced the environmental review for an acquisition, and successfully launched a valuation process at the California Public Utilities Commission to determine the fair market value of PG&E’s electric infrastructure that serves San Francisco.

Under Herrera, the SFPUC has worked every day to both protect the environment and ensure that the 2.7 million people and thousands of businesses across the Bay Area who rely on the SFPUC continue to have reliable, clean water. The SFPUC has worked diligently with other partners – often for years – to remove man-made barriers to fish migration, restore natural spawning habitat, and strategically increase water releases from reservoirs to mimic natural river flows. Different aspects of this work have taken place from the Peninsula to the Central Valley to the Sierra. The results are showing.  

Chinook salmon returned to two Bay Area creeks this past winter for the first time in decades. Steelhead trout populations are booming on those same two waterways: Alameda Creek and San Mateo Creek. The lower Tuolumne River in the Central Valley has now seen more than a thousand fish flourish in recent springs.  

Under Herrera, the SFPUC also continues to make generational improvements to a sewer system whose oldest parts date back to the Gold Rush. He oversaw the completion of the first of five major projects at the Southeast Treatment Plant, San Francisco’s oldest and largest wastewater treatment plant. The SFPUC is completely transforming the plant, which was built in 1952 and continues to handle 80% of the wastewater San Francisco produces.  

The SFPUC is modernizing the plant so it works better, smells better and protects the environment better. This is all happening while keeping the plant running around the clock, ensuring that everyone can still take a shower and flush their toilet.

Last year the SFPUC completed the first of five major projects at the plant, the $717 million Headworks Facility. This facility is the first step in the wastewater treatment process. It’s where debris and grit are removed. It has been rebuilt to withstand a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and 3 feet of sea level rise. The new facility also significantly reduces odors, a welcome and long-requested improvement from neighbors in the Bayview. 

About the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is a department of the City and County of San Francisco. It delivers drinking water to 2.7 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area, collects and treats wastewater for the City and County of San Francisco, and meets 75% of the electricity demand in San Francisco with clean energy. The SFPUC’s mission is to provide customers with high-quality, efficient and reliable water, power, and sewer services in a manner that values environmental and community interests, and sustains the resources entrusted to the agency's care. Learn more at sfpuc.gov.