KP

William Kahrl

Contact Information

1201 K Street, Suite 800
Sacramento, CA 95814

Direct: 916-498-7731

Main: 916-448-2162

Fax: 916-448-4923

E-Mail: bkahrl@ka-pow.com

Professional Experience

An award-winning author, editor and internationally recognized expert on water policy, William Kahrl heads KP Public Relations division. In that capacity, he has worked with public agencies and private corporations involved with agriculture, educational reform, energy, water resources development, project siting, land use, and tribal gaming.

Mr. Kahrl previously served as General Manager of the Sacramento office of Burson-Marsteller, where he counseled numerous national and international clients in the areas of natural resources, environmental regulation, and water policy. In addition, he assisted private landowners in arranging two of California's largest transfers of environmentally sensitive lands for public use and preservation, one of which the Clinton Administration compared in importance to the creation of Yosemite National Park.

In government, Mr. Kahrl has worked as a top advisor to members of both parties and in both houses of the California Legislature and as a member of the governor's staff. He spent eleven years writing about state policy as a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee, where he served as the Opinion Editor.

Mr. Kahrl is the editor of The California Water Atlas, which won the Awards of Excellence offered annually by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Printing Industries of America, and Bookbuilders West. His history of California water development Water and Power was selected by the New York Times as one of the best books of 1982. In recognition of his contributions to water policy, Mr. Kahrl was selected along with Jacques Cousteau, Loren Eisely and Rachel Carson to be memorialized with selections from their writing engraved in granite at the entrance to the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Technology.

Education

Mr. Kahrl graduated as a Scholar of the House at Yale College and attended the Yale Graduate School in American Studies. He is a former Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Environmental Affairs and received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to Princeton University. As a CORO Foundation Fellow in Public Affairs, he received the Irvine Fellowship awarded annually to the person who “makes the greatest contribution to California.”