The Texas Water Resources Institute’s semi-annual Texas Watershed Coordinator Roundtable on Nov. 12, in Fayetteville, Texas, brought together watershed coordinators and water resource professionals from across the state.
The roundtable is a part of the Texas Watershed Planning Program, and November’s event focused on the Texas Flood Plan, stormwater management and how water professionals can integrate the information into their watershed planning.
“The theme was really talking about how we could leverage the state flood planning process and those regional flood plans to potentially fund some watershed land-based implementation,” said TWRI Associate Director Lucas Gregory, Ph.D.. “A lot of the things that are included in watershed plans are essentially aimed at keeping water in the landscape, as opposed to letting it run off and enter the creek. That’s also part of the goal of the state flood plan, to manage those storm flows.”
Attendees had the opportunity to hear from various state agencies. Reem Zoun, assistant deputy executive administrator at the Texas Water Development Board, gave an overview of the Texas State Flood Plan and ongoing collaboration opportunities.
“From there, we had Mikel Wilkins with the San Antonio River Authority talk about how they’re using stormwater management strategies and how they can help address flooding issues to an extent,” Gregory said. “We’re not saying we’re going to be able to prevent flooding. This is thinking about how we can maybe help minimize some of those storm flows and also get water quality benefits.”
Wrapping up the morning, Zoun and Wilkins joined Matt Hollon, Austin Watershed Protection regulatory policy analyst, for a panel discussion and fielded questions from the audience while discussing integrating flood planning and watershed planning.
From there, attendees broke into small groups and discussed questions over challenges and successes they’ve faced in stormwater planning, Gregory said.
The discussions, along with networking opportunities throughout the day, aim to foster connections between water professionals.
“The whole point of these events is to build that network and learn from others who are doing similar stuff in a different spot. There may be an idea that you glean from them that you’re like,
‘Oh, hey, I hadn’t thought about that. I could do that over in my watershed, too,’” Gregory said. “That’s really the highlight, seeing those connections get made, and that value get received.”
