By Ana Gomez Salcido 
For Mario Sierra, San Diego’s Director of Environmental Services Department, it is important to take the City into the future to be able to meet the Zero Waste Plan and the Climate Action Plan.
Sierra, who was born in Tijuana but was raised in southeast San Diego, has over 27 years of experience working for the City of San Diego in eight different departments, acting as director of four of those City departments.
“I always wanted to work for a big company but I always had an interest in public service. I wanted to be a part of a team that provided services to the people,” Sierra said. “The City is so large that you can build bridges, water systems, parks, and libraries. It gives you an opportunity to do many different things in engineering and it was something I always wanted to do.”
“If you work for an engineering firm you may just do one thing like build buildings, but you can do many things working with the City,” Sierra added.
Mario Sierra’s drive help his city can be traced back to his upbringing in southeast San Diego where he became involved in his community.
“From a very young age, I felt that southeast San Diego had a negative reputation and I wanted to do my part to improve the neighborhood. I saw that Chicano Federation wanted to improve the neighborhood as well, so I worked at the Barrio Station in southeast San Diego,” said Sierra.
Sierra noted that seeing the opportunities available, taking risks, and doing things outside his comfort zone kept him focused on his career goal, which was to get a degree in engineering.
Because of his love of math, physics, and hands-on design, Sierra was always determined to go into a career in engineering. The good influence of his mother and his grandfather also lead him to pursue a higher education.
“My mom and my dad only have an elementary school education, but my mom always encouraged my siblings and I to go to school. I have an older brother and sister and they started working right after high school, but I went to UCSD,” Sierra shared.
Through his interests and the support of his family, Sierra was the first in his family to get a college degree.
“I saw a lot of other kids who got into trouble or didn’t do well in school,” Sierra said. “Having a strong mom, and my grandfather had an influence in me to work hard and study.”
Sierra got a bachelor’s degree in applied mechanics in engineering sciences at the University of California, San Diego.
After graduation, Sierra started working in the private sector. He was first introduced to the City while he was working for a general engineering contractor while going to the building inspection department to file building permits.
Today, Sierra has run the Environmental Services Department of the City of San Diego for over two years. Through this department, Sierra oversees the landfill, collection of trash and recyclables, the City’s sustainability program, and the environmental protection program for the City.
“Working with renewable energy, and building sustainability is really exciting. Most people don’t know this but as trash decomposes it generates methane gas and we capture it and produce electricity with it,” Sierra said.
“One of my goals is to expand that program and produce more power from the methane gas and fuel for transportation vehicles from that methane. We don’t produce transportation fuel right now, but we do have electricity that we produce from the gas,” Sierra declared.
Achieving the goal of producing transportation fuel from methane gas goes along with the Climate Action Plan that was adopted by the City of San Diego last December which aims to have 100 percent of renewable energy by 2035.
“The Climate Action Plan means that we, as City departments, need to be innovative, and do everything we can to generate renewable energy,” explained Sierra. “We are expanding solar as much as we can in the City, but we are also looking to generate power by using methane gas. Our goal is to reduce Greenhouse emissions and also to reduce our energy costs.”
To help achieve the Climate Action Plan and the Zero Waste Plan, both City of San Diego initiatives that are overseen by the Environmental Services Department, Sierra hopes to introduce the City San Diego to the future.
“My goal is to have the city go to the next level and introducing new technology because one of the things we need to do is waste diversion. We want to divert trash that is going to the landfill, so we are encouraging people to reduce their items or to recycle,” Sierra added. “We want to capture as much as we can in greenery and food waste to generate compost, which also generates methane gas; there is an opportunity for the City to create additional power from the food waste that it collects.”
Sierra, who has dedicated to public service through many City departments, has also the goal to remain focused on his family at the same time that he gets more involved with community issues.