Lizette Richardson Appointed Acting Superintenden of Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park (CA)
Lizette Richardson Appointed Acting Superintendent

Lizette Richardson has been selected as the acting superintendent at Joshua Tree National Park.

Richardson, currently the chief of maintenance and engineering at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, will take over for Curt Sauer, who retired on September 30th after seven years in the position.

Richardson’s appointment as acting superintendent began on Monday, September 27th, and is expected to last 60 days. As acting superintendent, she will oversee operations for the 794,000-acre national park, which receives 1.3 million visitors annually. The park has a $6.2 million annual budget and a staff of 144 permanent and temporary employees.

In a 26-year professional career, Richardson has been a design engineer, environmental manager, and project manager at several U.S. Department of Defense installations. As project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Galveston District, she was responsible for multi-million dollar civil works projects, including a $344 million flood control project in Houston, Texas.

Richardson began her National Park Service career at Lake Mead in November, 2004. As chief of maintenance and engineering at Lake Mead, she is responsible for the planning, design, construction, and oversight of a broad range of park infrastructure projects as well as ongoing maintenance operations at the park, the fifth most heavily visited unit of the National Park System. These projects include repair and upgrade of picnic areas, launch ramps, courtesy docks, restrooms, and water and wastewater infrastructure and treatment facilities. She also manages millions of dollars of Federal Highway Administration road construction projects throughout Lake Mead.

Lizette is an active member of Pacific West Region’s maintenance advisory committee and has served a detail at the Service’s Park Facility Management Division in Washington, DC.

Richardson has a B.S. in civil engineering from Manhattan College and is a registered professional engineer in the state of Nevada. She and her husband Rick, live in Henderson, Nevada.