Virginia Mahacek

Overview

Virginia Mahacek is a fluvial geomorphologist with an extensive background in education and outreach, restoration planning and design, environmental compliance, and natural resource management. She has 28 years of experience as a technical analyst and project manager of watershed assessments, stream studies, restoration planning, design development, baseline and performance monitoring, alternatives analysis, compliance, and construction oversight. Virginia is accomplished in environmental compliance pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) regulations, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensing. She has served a variety of local, state, tribal, non-governmental and federal lead agencies and on projects of varied spatial scale, technical complexity and regulatory context.

Virginia effectively communicates technical and planning issues with varied agencies and public stakeholders and facilitates planning progress within challenging community and regulatory settings. Her expertise includes natural and human disturbance-responses, climate change, wildfire hazard and risk reduction, and beaver management. She has worked across the western United States, with a focus on Lake Tahoe, the Sierra Nevada, and the Columbia River Basin.