Arlen Orchard, the CEO of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, said he will retire next August, in his 30th year with the nation’s sixth-largest community-owned electric utility.
Orchard started with SMUD as a staff attorney in 1990, rising to assistant general counsel in 1998 and general counsel in 2001. He was named CEO in 2014 after the utility did a nationwide search.
“It is bittersweet for me,” Orchard said in an interview. “I always said when I got this position, that it would…