John Porco
John Porco is senior director for homeland security at Michael Baker Jr., Inc. He has 32 years of experience in emergency management, first with US. Department of Transportation and then with Baker.
At DOT, Porco directed a multi-million dollar program to prepare for and provide transportation resources in disasters and terrorist incidents. Since retiring from DOT and joining Baker 13 years ago, he has managed a wide variety of major projects, specializing in infrastructure protection. Even before 9-11, he supervised a security assessment and development of a terrorism response plan for the Salt Lake City water utility prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics. Later, he managed comprehensive vulnerability assessments for four large water systems, including the East Bay Municipal Utility District in California, one of the nation’s largest utilities.
For the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, he led the development of one of the earliest resilience guidance documents for the water sector, the Security Practices Primer for Water UtilitiesL. Most recently, he led a three-year, $2.3 million study on the state-of-the art in water security for the Department of Homeland Security.
Porco is active in the American Water Works Association, where he serves on the Emergency Preparedness and Security Committee. He has spoken on water sector resilience at a number of meetings, including the AWWA Water Security Congress and has been published in the Journal AWWA. He is active in The Infrastructure Protection Partnership. Mr. Porco is a registered professional civil engineer.
