Texas

Upper Trinity Regional Comprehensive Watershed Management Plan – Phase I (FY 17)

This interagency project includes the North Central Texas Council of Governments and some of their 230 member governments along with USACE.  Currently North Central Texas is the 4^th largest region in the U.S. with a population of roughly 7 million. By 2050, the region’s population is expected to double.  This new growth, including highly intensity urbanization, without proper watershed planning, will result in significantly worse flooding conditions and damage costs within the Upper Trinity River Basin.  The emphasis of Phase I of this project is to raise flood risk awareness for local governments using coordination, outreach, education, and workshop activities to establish a collaborative group of stakeholders to share in the development of the watershed management plan that focuses on flood prevention efforts, not mitigation.

San Antonio River Tournament for Integrated Flood Risk Management

This interagency project includes the San Antonio River Authority (SARA), USGS Texas Water Science Center, USACE – Institute of Water Resources (IWR) and USACE – Fort Worth District.  SARA plans to use the multi-hazard tournament methodology to address flood risk in the context of multiple water management objectives.  The integrated framework is important since some flood risk management strategies can also produce other benefits, such as improved water quality and stream restoration.  Decision makers and stakeholders participating in the tournament must work within a constrained budget forcing them to develop cost effective strategies that consider flood risk along with other water resource objectives.  The goal of the tournament is to help educate local government officials and stakeholders about how actions by individuals and local governments can reduce flood risks while providing other water resource benefits and to provide them a vehicle to be more effectively integrated into the planning and policy development process in the San Antonio River Basin.

Interagency Development of a LifeSim Model and Update to the Dallas Floodway Emergency Action Plan

The City of Dallas is in the process of updating the Dallas Floodway (DF) Emergency Action Plan (EAP) for the East and West Levees of the DF System.  In the time since the original EAP was developed in 2010, the USACE – Hydrologic Research Center developed the LifeSim model, which helps determine loss of life under various flooding conditions and can assist communities in preparing emergency evacuation scenarios.  This became critically important to Dallas since during a May 2015 flooding event some of the major evacuation routes outlined in their EAP were cut off by flood waters.  The USACE – Fort Worth District is conducting updated hydrology and hydraulic modeling of the DF System to include the May 2015 flood parameters in addition to preparing the LifeSim model analysis that will assist the City of Dallas in preparing a state of the art updated EAP.

Texas Flood Resiliency Activity Tracker (TxFRAT)

This interagency project includes FEMA Region VI, Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), Texas Water Development Board (TWDB)/Texas Natural Resources Information System (TNRIS), Texas Floodplain Management Association (TFMA), and USACE – Fort Worth, Galveston, Tulsa, and Albuquerque Districts.  Currently in Texas, there are over 50 on-going federal and state flood risk identification, planning, and mitigation projects, which are led by multiple state and federal organizations. In order to provide for a coordinated plan of attack for flood risk projects in Texas, partnering agencies determined that a tool was needed to facilitate planning and communication of on-going projects.  The purpose of the TxFRAT project is to develop a one-stop, web-based mapping system that highlights flood risk identification and mitigation projects throughout the state.