Water Wonks Hour Lecture Series #2: Use of comprehensive models for targeting green stormwater infrastructure.
The Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance is pleased to introduce our 2024 Water Wonks Lecture Series. Mark your calendars for 3:30 p.m. on the 4th Wednesday of each month. Water Wonks will feature a host of experts sharing innovative ideas and details about their work in the world of water. The series is a free community education opportunity.
Lecture #2: Use of comprehensive models for targeting green stormwater infrastructure.
Speaker: Sheeba Thomas- San Antonio River Authority Senior Technical Engineer
Bio: Dr. Sheeba M. Thomas Dominguez has been with the San Antonio River Authority since 2008 and currently holds the position of a Senior Technical engineer. She has over 16 years of experience with hydrology, hydraulics, and water quality models.
She is a licensed professional engineer with the State of Texas and has Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) certifications. For more than a decade, her focus has primarily been on the development of comprehensive water quality models and tools to quantify issues and mitigation and she has presented her work on multiple local, state, and national platforms. These endeavors have earned multiple state and national recognitions. She enjoys occasionally teaching Water Resources Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Synopsis: The San Antonio River Authority (River Authority) has been working on the development of comprehensive water quality models, tools and analysis since more than a decade for quantitative water quality master planning and Best Management Practice (BMP)/Low Impact Development (LID) prioritization of the San Antonio River Basin.
The River Authority recently updated their water quality models for some of our urban watersheds, based on more current information such as land use, topography, stream network, subbasin delineation, meteorological data, stream flows, ambient and storm water quality sampling data, wastewater flows, sanitary sewer overflows (SSO), recharge and channel losses, spring flows, and diversions.
Available floodplain hydraulic models were reviewed and used to generate rating tables for model reaches. The revised models were calibrated, and peer reviewed to observed flow and constituent data following River Authority’s water quality modeling standards. The suite of water quality modeling tools such as the SARA Load Reduction Tool (LRT) which automatically determine load reduction needed for each subbasin and constituent to meet stream standards and the Enhanced BMP Tool to determine the optimal (minimal cost) combinations of BMP/LID were also developed. The results from the models and tool runs have been further analyzed to determine where water quality improvement measures need to be implemented for improving the surface water quality conditions.
The results from these efforts serve as a valuable best science-based resource to the communities in fostering efforts for water quality preservation/mitigation.
