New Office Manager Appointed for Reclamation’s Central Valley Operations Office

Kristin White has been appointed as operations manager for the Bureau of Reclamation’s California-Great Basin Region’s Central Valley Operations (CVO) office in Sacramento. White will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day water and power operations of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project (CVP), one of the world’s premier water storage and delivery systems. The CVP is comprised of 20 dams and reservoirs, 11 powerplants and more than 500 miles of canals and aqueducts within California’s Central Valley.

White has been the acting operations manager at CVO since September. She began her career with Reclamation in 2010 as a hydrologist in the Klamath Basin Area Office in Klamath Falls, OR. She subsequently has served as a modeler, project manager, branch chief and technical expert on various long-term water supply planning efforts for the CVP. Prior to serving as the acting Operations manager at CVO, White was the deputy operations manager at CVO for two years. Before joining Reclamation, White worked as a consultant in Virginia and Texas, focusing primarily on flood control modeling, planning and design.

“Kristin has proven excellence in her various Reclamation positions for the past nine years,” said California-Great Basin’s Regional Director Ernest Conant. “Her strong leadership and experience are the right fit to guide CVO through the challenges and opportunities facing the CVP.”

In new position White will support CVP operations in balancing the needs of agriculture, cities, fish, wildlife, tribal communities and recreational users. CVP provides irrigation water to more than three million acres of farm land; urban water for more than three million people; industrial water for several key economic areas, such as the Silicon Valley; and environmental water to meet wildlife needs and fishery restoration. In addition, the CVP generates between 4.8 – 5.6-billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually aa well as providing major flood protection along the major Central Valley rivers – the American, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Stanislaus rivers.

White earned a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Florida Institute of Technology and a Master of Engineering degree in civil engineering with an emphasis in water resources from the University of Houston. She is a registered Professional Engineer in Texas and also serves as the chair of the River Basin Planning, Policy and Operations Committee in the Environmental and Water Resources Institute under the American Society of Civil Engineers.