Water, Sanitation, and Public Health Challenges in Ventura County

Wednesday, December 13, 2017 7 PM
CLU Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center, 130 Overton Court, rooms 253/254 (second floor)

This presentation will provide an overview of the infrastructure for water and sanitation in the eleven special district, managed and operated by Ventura County Public Works Agency’s Water and Sanitation department. With state of the art laboratory and operations systems, much of the network is monitored and operated remotely using a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. This allows efficiencies in staffing that are critical to the successful operation of infrastructure that supports the farthest reaches of Ventura County. However, this automation, coupled with the remote locations of the water and wastewater infrastructure can be a security challenge that needs to be addressed from a Public Safety perspective.

Michaela Brown

Michaela Brown is the Director the Ventura County Public Works Agency Water and Sanitation Department. Prior to joining the County, she was the Director of Facilities Planning for the Navy base that supports the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Prior to her work with the Academy, Michaela served in various program and engineering management positions throughout the United States and abroad, including a 20-year career in the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps. She has more than 25 years of in-depth engineering experience along with detailed experience in consensus building, land-use, customer service, rate setting, and community outreach.

Michaela has an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in Civil Engineering with a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M and a Master of International Policy and Practice from George Washington University.