Stephen Arakawa, group manager of the Water Resource Management Group at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, has a background of 20 years working in the water field as a civil engineer. At Metropolitan he is responsible for matters relating to the District's imported water supplies as well as its local resources programs, conservation, water transfers and exchanges, groundwater storage and reliability planning.

Before coming to Metropolitan in 1987, Arakawa worked for the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in Sacramento for seven years. For DWR he conducted studies regarding the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. He is a registered engineer in California. He is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a degree in civil engineering.