Media Contact: Dan DuBray, 202-513-0574, ddubray@usbr.gov
For Immediate Release: January 20, 2017
WASHINGTON – David Murillo has been named Acting Commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation, which is the largest wholesale water supplier in the United States and the nation’s second largest producer of hydroelectric power. He will serve in this capacity until a commissioner is nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate.
As acting commissioner, Murillo directs an agency of more than 5,000 employees across 17 western states who help maintain 475 dams and 337 reservoirs that provide more than 30 million acre-feet (10 trillion gallons) of water for 31 million people in the West. The Commissioner is also responsible for Reclamation’s maintenance of 53 hydroelectric power plants that generate, on average, 40 billion kilowatt hours annually – about 15 percent of the nation’s hydropower – and provides one out of five Western farmers with irrigation water for farmland that is the source of much of the nation’s produce.
Murillo was appointed regional director of Reclamation’s Mid-Pacific Region in December 2012. He oversaw management of the Region’s 11 water projects in an area encompassing the northern two-thirds of California, most of western Nevada and part of southern Oregon. The Region includes the multi-purpose Central Valley Project in California, one of the nation’s most complex and highest-profile network of dams, reservoirs, canals and hydroelectric power plants.
Beginning in September 2010, he served as Reclamation’s deputy commissioner for operations. In 2006, Murillo was selected as the power manager for the Grand Coulee Power Office, the nation’s largest hydroelectric facility. He managed the Grand Coulee and Hungry Horse dams and power plants. Murillo joined Reclamation in 2000 as the manager of the field office in Yakima, Washington, where he was responsible for the operation and maintenance of storage reservoirs, fish facilities, diversion dams and hydropower plants. Previously, he worked for the Department of Defense and Department of Energy on nuclear-controlled pure water and waste tanks, as well as steam plants.
Murillo is originally from Yakima and graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1984.
Murillo and his wife, Terri, have three adult children.
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Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier in the United States, and the nation’s second largest producer of hydroelectric power. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at https://www.usbr.gov and follow us on Twitter @USBR.
David Murillo
