The Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI), Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are hosting a meeting July 11 in College Station for anyone interested in water quality in the Navasota River and its watershed downstream of Lake Limestone.
The meeting, free and open to the public, will be held from 10:30 a.m.–noon at the city of College Station Meeting and Training Facility assembly room, 1601 Graham Road. Registration begins at 10:15 a.m.
Dr. Lucas Gregory, TWRI research scientist, encouraged local stakeholders interested in improving and protecting the river’s water quality to attend the meeting.
“A brief update on the process to remove the impaired portions of the Navasota River from the list of impaired waters in Texas will be provided followed by discussion on plans to implement practices and activities across the watershed to improve water quality,” he said.
Gregory said watershed stakeholders developed a watershed protection plan in 2017 and the plan laid the groundwork for this process.
“Now it is a matter of further documenting water quality goals and the planned strategies to improve water quality,” he said. “Management measures selected by watershed stakeholders will improve water quality once they are implemented.”
Gregory said implementing watershed management strategies requires considerable funding in some cases.
“Right now, several grant funding opportunities exist for selected implementation activities,” he said. “We will discuss these opportunities and decide whether or not to apply for these funds during the meeting.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is supporting these additional efforts and continued stakeholder engagement activities through the federal total maximum daily load program funding provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through a Clean Water Act Section 106 grant.
For more information, contact Gregory at 979-845-7869 or LFGregory@ag.tamu.edu.
