Robert Horii is a native of the South Bay area. He grew up during World War II and later attended Redondo Beach High School. He received his Associate of Arts degree in Engineering from El Camino College in 1951 and acquired his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Horii’s career with the City of Los Angeles spanned four decades from 1953 to 1996.

When he graduated in 1953 the United States was immersed in the Korean War. Robert Horii was an ideal candidate for the draft.

“I was 1A, and subject to the draft,” Horii said, referring to his high draft rating, “No one wanted to hire 1As.”

During the same time the City of Los Angeles was hungry for engineers to work on a bond project to upgrade the City’s storm drains. In June 1953 Horii entered City Service at the class of Civil Engineering Assistant. Six months later the U.S. Army drafted him.

Horii returned to the City after serving for two years in Alaska. He spent the next several years working in storm drain design. In the early sixties he worked on the programming for the first computerization of the City’s storm drain runoff.

In August of 1964 Horii left City Hall for the Bureau of Engineering’s West Los Angeles District Office. As Assistant District Engineer, and later District Engineer, Horii witnessed first hand the sudden increase in hillside subdivisions. Those myriad subdivisions naturally required countless public works improvements. So dedicated was Horii that he spent all night watching over the large Franklin Canyon dam and debris basin during the worst of the huge flood of 1969.

Horii transferred to the Bureau’s Wastewater program in February 1971. The same year voters approved a $100 million bond initiative. Coupled with grant money approved by Congress having passed the Clean Water Act, the City now had the means to begin construction of direly needed water treatment facilities

As City Engineer Robert Horii continued to maintain and improve the systems which he had helped design. In 1987 Hyperion’s Energy Recovery System allowed the plant to discontinue sludge disposal in the ocean. At his urging work began to expand and convert the Hyperion Treatment Plant to full secondary treatment.

During Horii’s tenure a planning and environmental review began for the North Outfall Replacement Sewer, which would extend the Culver City East Central Interceptor Sewer to the Los Angeles Glendale Treatment Plant.

After the Northridge Earthquake devastated many parts of the City, the Bureau of Engineering assisted in the demolition of unsafe buildings and by hauling away 1.3 million tons of debris.

The City’s Central Library suffered a fatal fire in the mid-eighties and the Bureau was in charge of efforts to reconstruct the Library System’s flagship location.

Robert Horii along with City Council President John Ferraro and the Chief Legislative Analyst raised an opposition to Mayor Richard Riordan’s Blue Ribbon Committee, which wanted to abandon City Hall and construct a new one. The group convinced the City Council to adopt a plan that would seismically retrofit and renovate Los Angeles’ City Hall.

Robert Horii retired from City service in 1996. After an exhaustive and productive partnership with the City of Los Angeles Horii left for its citizens 1500 projects with a combined construction value that exceeded $4 billion.