A Santa Clara Valley Water District manager who says former CEO Rick Callender sexually harassed her, then blocked her promotion years later in retaliation, has sued the agency — which is still paying Callender a six-figure salary and has agreed to cover his legal costs.

Jessica Collins's lawsuit is not only about one manager's blocked career. It puts a public agency in the extraordinary position of underwriting the defense of the very executive its own outside investigators found had harassed employees — because before Callender left, the elected board agreed to keep paying him for a year, cover his legal fees and take on the liability for any employment claims he might bring. Ratepayers who fund flood protection and drinking water for 2 million people in Santa Clara County are now effectively on both sides of the same fight.

Collins joined Valley Water in 2006, and her conflict with Callender is nearly as old. She took him to court once before, suing over the alleged harassment in the summer of 2009; a judge tossed that case in early 2010 after she stopped showing up, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post. She stayed on at the district. Callender climbed to the top of it.

The thread connecting that old grievance to Monday's filing is a single promotion. Collins applied for a senior post in August 2022 and advanced through two interview rounds. For the third round, Callender — CEO by then — added himself to the panel. An assistant CEO later told her the job had gone elsewhere and that Callender expected to retire soon, hinting her chance might come once he did. A second woman who also accuses Callender of harassment later told Collins that he had rigged the scoring to keep her from advancing. Collins is now suing for discrimination, retaliation and harassment.

Callender rejects the claims wholesale. In an email he branded them "categorically false, baseless" and said he looked forward to clearing his name in court. His lawyer has cast the accusations as trading on racial bias and stereotypes about Black men. Callender made history in 2020 as the first Black leader of the agency and also heads the California-Hawaii NAACP conference; Valley Water put him on paid leave in December 2024, and he exited the CEO role in March.

The case against him internally was not a toss-up. Reports the board made public this spring found that, over a span of years, Callender had texted inappropriate photos to two female staffers, remarked on their looks and pressed them to socialize with him after hours; the same reports concluded he had kept Collins out of the 2022 job as retaliation for her earlier complaint, the Palo Alto Daily Post reported (external source, opens in a new tab). The outside investigators branded his answers "evasive, argumentative and sarcastic" and wrote that some of his explanations "defied logic."

In an email he branded them "categorically false, baseless" and said he looked forward to clearing his name in court.

Here is what should unsettle ratepayers. Instead of firing Callender, the board voted Feb. 20 to cover his legal fees, shoulder liability for his own employment claims, and retain him as a paid adviser for a year at a salary of $512,886. His retirement announcement followed within days. Staff and the district's unions revolted, publicly pressing the agency's leadership to step down over the arrangement.

Nor is Collins the only accuser shadowing Callender. In March 2025, Salena Pryor — who worked with him through the NAACP — filed her own complaint in Sacramento County, claiming he leaned on her to steer a $5,000 Valley Water sponsorship to the NAACP chapter he runs while downplaying his role, San José Spotlight reported (external source, opens in a new tab). Callender pointed questions about that case to the national NAACP, which stayed silent. That same account noted that three women on the water board had opposed his 2020 elevation to CEO, pointing to the harassment allegations already following him.

Collins says the ordeal wore on her body — dread before work, sleepless nights, migraines, chest pain. Matt Keller, a Valley Water spokesman, declined to talk about her suit but said the district has ramped up harassment-prevention training and that interim CEO Melanie Richardson has remade how HR fields complaints and runs hiring. The board, he added, is auditing its own investigation process. None of which explains why the public still cuts checks to the man those investigations faulted.