Mr. Michael Mierzwa is a registered Civil Engineer in the State of California employed by the California Department of Water Resources as a flood policy advisor and assistant to the Deputy Director for Integrated Water Management. His specialization is the planning, design, and financing of large-scale water resources systems and real-time emergency operations. His current focus is assessing the public benefits associated with the development and implementation of water resources projects. He has worked with the Department for 13-years.

Within DWR’s Division of Flood Management’s FloodSAFE Program Management Office, he led the overall communications and outreach associated with the $4.9B FloodSAFE California Initiative. In addition to being responsible for coordination with external Federal, State, and local agencies and the general public, his role as the Division of Flood Management’s communications lead also includes coordinating and assisting all of the other programs and projects related to one of the Department of Water Resources largest efforts since the construction of the State Water Project in the 1960s and 70s. Starting in 2011 he was also placed in charge of all of the technical development associated with the 2012 Central Valley Flood Protection Plan (CVFPP) and the development of Department policy’s focused on quantifying the system-wide benefits associated with flood risk reduction projects and assessing the hydraulic impacts and risk transfer related to improvements of flood management facilities and operations.

Mr. Mierzwa will present information about how DWR has organized work related to the FloodSAFE Program and provide hints about future FloodSAFE efforts and how this fits in with the broader context of Integrated Water Management as well.