Session 2 | Monday, November 8 | 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EST

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ATTN OFFICIAL JUDGES FOR THE STUDENT PRESENTATION COMPETITION: If you were contacted by the Conference Planning Committee Student Activities Chair, Allison Lewis, remember to use the appropriate evaluation form when scoring student participants. The link and QR code to this form was emailed to you along with your student assignments. To make identifying student participants easier, the green graduation cap  next to a session title includes a student who is participating in the PRESENTATION Competition.

Panel: One Water: Putting Theory into Practice

Moderator: Jon Dinges

Presenters: Jon Dinges, Black & Veatch and Mike Britt, One Water Project
One Water represents a shift in the way we approach water resource management – from viewing water as waste to valuing every drop as essential to our natural systems and quality of life. One Water provides a comprehensive approach to solving complex water resource management challenges. As our cities, utilities, and water managers face water scarcity and competition, climate change, aging infrastructure, population growth, new regulations, water quality impairment, and increasing costs, One Water thinking is needed to achieve a secure water future. Imagine addressing each of these challenges independently – a disintegrated approach - leading to a host of different goals and solutions, some of which may actually conflict and result in spending tremendous resources and time without reaching effective solutions. As water managers look to address a host of challenges simultaneously, One Water integration is the approach to long-term success. This thought-leading panel provides case studies illustrating implementation of the theory of One Water to develop sustainable and resilient outcomes.

Agricultural Nutrient Loading

Moderator: Hannah Hartzler

Presenters:

• Hannah Hartzler and William U. Mitsch, Everglades Wetland Research Park, The Water School, Florida Gulf Coast University, "Wetland Nutrient Recycling and Crop Production in a 4-year WetlacultureTM Experiment in Subtropical Florida"
One of the most pressing environmental problems today is the loading of excess nutrients into freshwater and saltwater aquatic ecosystems. This often leads to eutrophication, increases in widespread harmful algal blooms (HABs), decreased water quality, and deleterious human health effects. A leading cause of this surplus of nutrients is urban and agricultural fertilizer runoff. Our wetlacultureTM approach focuses on solving these impacts by capturing nutrients (dominant, long lasting nutrients) with wetlands and later making these sequestered nutrients available to crops. This wetlacultureTM experiment in subtropical Florida is a landscape-level ecological engineering investigation of ecosystem services of wetlands for improving water quality and recycling nutrients for crop production. Earlier wetlacultureTM studies at our site in Naples, Florida have shown that wetland mesocosms effectively capture nutrients from urban runoff. In this study, 16 three-year-old wetland mesocosms were drained, tilled, and planted with sweet corn to assess the efficacy of wetland rotation to agriculture. Nutrient recycling is estimated with hydrology, water quality, and soil and plant tissue analyses. The results from the present study will be compared to earlier results of nutrient retention by these wetland mesocosms to provide a 4-year biogeochemistry-level understanding of wetlacultureTM in the subtropics. Data may illustrate the efficacy of wetlacultureTM to improve water quality while growing crops in subtropical regions and predict the practical uses of such techniques at a landscape scale.


• James Javaruski and Puspa Adhikari, Florida Gulf Coast University, "Application of Radio and Stable Isotopes to Understand and Track Sources of Nutrients in Southwest Florida"
Eutrophication of our rivers and coastal waters due to increasing urban and agricultural anthropogenic nutrient inputs has encouraged the proliferation of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). In Southwest Florida, these HABs take the form of rapidly growing freshwater blue-green algae as well as marine red tides that result in substantial impacts to wildlife, tourism, and general human health. As urbanization of the Caloosahatchee watershed continues and additional nutrients enter the river, it becomes more important than ever to determine the contribution of each source to the watershed nutrient budget. Understanding the varied sources of the nutrient supply to these blooms is vital to developing management plans as well as forecasting future impacts. To better understand the nutrient inputs in the Southwest Florida coastal waters, we used both radio (223,224,226,228Ra) and stable isotopes (13C&15N) as tracers. Between the Calosahatchee River, Gulf of Mexico, Imperial River and groundwater sites, water samples were collected from 44 sampling locations in June 2020 (wet season) and February 2021 (dry season) to determine the extent to which each contributes to the Caloosahatchee and Gulf of Mexico nutrient profiles. The samples were then analyzed for stable and radioisotopes, as well as dissolved and total nutrients (total nitrogen, total phosphorous, nitrate, nitrite, orthophosphate, and silica). This research is currently a work in progress as radio and stable isotope analysis is still ongoing. The preliminary results however indicate groundwater is a potential source of nutrients in this area. Upon completion, the results from this study will help us better understand the source of nutrients that will be invaluable for proper management decisions.


• Matthew Ruppert and William J. Mitsch, Florida Gulf Coast University Everglades Wetland Research Park, "Assessing Water Quality Enhancment and Crop Production in a 5-year old WetlacultureTM Mesocosm Experiment in Central Ohio"
Eutrophication is an ongoing issue for waters around the globe. These harmful algal blooms (HABs) are fueled by excess nutrients supplied by point and non-point source pollution. Agricultural runoff in particular, has been identified as one of the main contributors to eutrophication. WetlacultureTM is a proposed solution, focusing on the utilization wetland functions for nutrient retention, then ‘flipping’ the system to crop production without conventional fertilization. The purpose of this study is to assess the water quality and agricultural capabilities of WetlacultureTM in the experiment’s 5th year. Sweet corn was planted late spring 2021 at the mesocosm site near Buckeye Lake, Ohio. Sweet corn planted in 2021 was planted on soil with four years of sequestered nutrients by wetlands. Data such as ear size, biomass, quality, and monetary value will be compared to 2020 Buckeye Lake WetlacultureTM data and a local reference farmer using conventional agricultural techniques. Mesocosms previously used for agricultural purposes in 2020 will be flipped back to wetlands and subjected to their respected hydrologic treatments. Wetland quality improvement will then be determined by hydrologic and nutrient measurements of the mesocosms’ inflow and outflow. A floristic quality assessment will also be utilized to examine the successional direction of the wetland vegetation. This study will lead to further determination of the efficacy of this innovative approach to nutrient management and food production in high-nutrient agriculture.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Water Resources

Moderator: Valerie Seidel

Presenters:

• Diana Restrepo-Osorio, USGS, "Stakeholder Engagement to Inform Decision Relevant Water Data Delivery"
Water resource management and policy making require reliable decision support systems of updated and trustworthy scientific data. However, insufficient technological infrastructures, low data literacy, and data format complexities often prevent data users from accessing needed information. For this reason, it is imperative to establish protocols that include stakeholders during data delivery system designing phases. This proactive approach allows for the understanding of the social, economic, cultural, and political contexts where stakeholders produce science or make decisions about water resources. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) Water Mission Area is currently (2021) developing Integrated Water Availability Assessments (IWAAs) — a multi-extent, stakeholder driven, near real-time census and prediction of water availability for human and ecological uses at regional and national extents. To provide appropriate user accessibility, a user-centered design process and focus groups were used during the Discover phase of the IWAAs design process with the overarching objective to quantify potential user needs and preferences. Determining potential IWAAs user types is critical for the identification of the stakeholders that will be invited to participate in the subsequent Development phase of the program. Focus groups identified five types of potential users: decision-makers, decision-supporters, water-users, tribal nations, and non-profit organizations. These user types were dependent on diverse spatial and temporal scale data. However, results indicated that decision-makers benefitted most from data that has been synthesized into user friendly platforms. Additionally, decision-supporters most preferred easy access to raw data using operationalized data pulls. Relations among this IWAAs stakeholder engagement effort and other USGS data delivery studies allowed identification of trends, patterns, and potential information gaps for IWAAs future development efforts.


• Simone A. Williams, Sharon B. Megdal, and Susanna Eden, University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center, "Recognizing and Addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Water Resource Dialogues"
While population demographics in the United States have been trending towards greater diversity, similar diversity is not reflected in most water institutions, decision-making processes, and dialogues. However, changing national and global environments require institutional strategies and actions that meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations. In response, the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) is undertaking extensive research to inform improvement of its outreach strategies. Research findings will be applied to improve the WRRC’s engagement practices and to advance understanding of mechanisms for expanding diversity in the water resources field. This presentation will report findings from a systematic literature review conducted to define, characterize and identify best practices to address diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) issues in water dialogues and organizations. Theories and methods from the literature on diversity, environmental justice, discourse, and social learning are used to articulate a conceptual framework for understanding and addressing DEIJ issues in water dialogues. We illustrate parallels between notions of environmental justice (as distribution, recognition, capability, and participation from the human and nonhuman realms) and notions of justice in water dialogues. These concepts are employed to show that DEIJ in water dialogues transcend issues of information resource distribution to include issues of cultural recognition and political participation. A central argument is that a plurality of theoretical concepts and tools can be applied to examine and address DEIJ in water dialogues and institutions. To demonstrate this argument, an overview of related justice issues is presented. We define the concept of (in)justice in water dialogues based on relevant theoretical approaches; focusing on diversity, inclusion, and mechanisms that influence how people with diverse voices engage in water discourses and institutions. We examine DEIJ characteristics and trends in water dialogues and organizations and posit that addressing DEIJ problems requires enhancement of individual and organizational capacity, building bridges, and forming alliances via engagement. Throughout, we apply social learning theory as a ‘way of knowing’ and a source for methods to increase engagement of under-represented groups. We conclude by providing recommendations for DEIJ engagement best practices for water dialogues and organizations.


• Valerie Seidel, The Balmoral Group, "Social equity considerations in Water Infrastructure investment"
Recent attention to social equity considerations still lags in U.S. water resource decision-making. In this session, we will discuss standard methods employed in international markets to consider the distributional effects of infrastructure investments. An important outcome of distributional analysis is informing different funding models. Commonly, distribution of gains and losses is an important aspect of capital investments or management plans to weigh up alternatives. Distributional analysis specifies the impact of the government intervention/investment on different population segments. For example, in a coastal resiliency plan, options under consideration may include various armoring/sea wall/revetment approaches, living shorelines, managed retreat, and other alternatives. Each option will entail specific costs and benefits. For every benefit, consideration is given to how the benefit is received. Is it a common pool resource, which everyone has access to? Is it a private benefit that accrues only to specific groups? Or is the cohort who gains the benefit different from those who pay the cost? And if so, what are the geographic or spatial limits of the benefit – is it a specific neighborhood, which in turn has a specific demographic profile? A similar analysis is necessary for costs – do the costs accrue to all or to particular groups, and are they concentrated or dispersed? Demographic cohorts range from age groups (intergenerational considerations) to racial, ethnic and social strata (low and moderate-income, for example). For each cost and benefit of a particular investment, socioeconomic effects, and their distributional impact, is determined. Aggregated, it is straightforward to assess whether the benefits are concentrated among a small group or widely distributed, as well as the costs. Distributional analysis also considers any unquantified effects and whether these are likely to significantly impact any of the identified groups. We will use recent, publicly available U.S. studies to demonstrate transparent methodologies for consideration by all practitioners in the water resource field. The session will pose questions about unintended consequences and the obligation of policymakers to consider disparate impacts when committing public dollars. In an environment of scarce resources and abundant need, readily available data supports the analysis of distributional effects.

Implementing Adaptation and Resiliency Through Impacts of Climate Change

Moderator: John Rehring

Presenters:

• Nancy Beller-Simms, NOAA/Climate Program Office, "Filling the Gaps: Climate and Weather Information for Small and Medium-size Water Utilities"
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Water Research Foundation (WRF) convened a series of eight regional workshops across the U.S. to improve the delivery of information resources and build resilience to climate change in small- to medium-size communities. The regional workshops focused on water system managers – including community drinking water and wastewater utility managers, stormwater managers, urban planners, and public works departments. An additional stand-alone webinar on water equity was hosted with the US Water Alliance. Each workshop was organized by regional partners and tailored to address issues identified in each region. Over 900 people participated, yielding important perspectives on the regional differences in culture, climate, water systems, challenges, and innovations. Many of NOAA’s and the US Environmental Protection Agency’s climate, weather and water-related tools were demonstrated, and a variety of regional presenters shared their experiences, tools, information, and expertise that benefit attendees as well as organizers. Resulting webinars, learning sessions, videos, and workshop summaries may be found here: https://cpo.noaa.gov/Meet-the-Divisions/Climate-and-Societal-Interactions/Water-Resources/Water-Utility-Study. Results focused on lessons learned from participants’ experiences as well as information and research that participants indicated they needed to cope with the changing climate. Results converged around four areas: managing stormwater and flooding, managing water supply, promoting equity in service delivery, and supporting capacity building and financing. Participants were also asked for feedback on NOAAs tools, information, and websites. Their insights point to ways NOAA (in particular) and other federal agencies at large can improve delivery of information to support water resource management in small- to medium-sized communities, especially as they work to build their resilience to climate change. The proposed presentation will highlight key findings from this study.


• Tricia Kyzar and Eban Bean, University of Florida, "Vulnerability Assessment of Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems in Low-lying Coastal Communities to Multiple Climate Related Threats"
Onsite Treatment and Disposal Systems (OSTDS) face multiple threats from climate change yet are rarely addressed in discussions of climate change impacts on structures or infrastructure. This may be because OSTDS are generally privately owned, however if one were to fail it would create a public health hazard and water quality problem. Like public infrastructure such as roads, buildings or public wastewater treatment facilities, OSTDS in coastal areas are at risk from high tide flooding, sea level rise, and other related impacts. High tide flooding can saturate drainfields causing temporary failure of effluent processing. Rising sea levels can permanently inundate drainfields and elevate groundwater, both saturating the vadose zone and leading to greater nitrogen species release into ground and surface waters. Additionally, OSTDS have been the predominant wastewater treatment system in our coastal communities, where a majority of our populations live, and where some of the most significant forms of climate change are being experienced today. Until now, very little work has been done to understand what risks OSTDS face from climate change or how significant those risks might be. This project presents a method to identify and quantify the risks that OSTDS face from climate change related impacts in low lying coastal communities. We begin by using ArcNLET to gauge the current nitrate loadings of OSTDS in the study area. Next, a vulnerability assessment method was developed, customized to the specific community (St. Augustine, FL). This method identifies the impacts that are most relevant to that community, establishes a risk ranking for each impact, and weights them against each other. This results in estimates of current nitrate loading and a vulnerability score that quantifies the level of risk each septic system is facing. The results provide communities with critical information to understand where OSTDS are already impacting water quality and are at greater risk from climate change related impacts. This information helped to identify an area of high risk and nitrate loadings and another area with low risk but higher nitrate loadings, concluding that the first area should be prioritized for a possible septic to sewer conversion project.


• Steve Fitzgibbons, SJRWMD, "What's SJRWMD Doing to Make NE FL More Resilient?"
Sea-level rise, increased severity of tropical storm events, and shifting rainfall patterns are effects of a changing climate which is expected to impact Floridians, property, and the state’s natural resources. These increased risks pose many challenges to state and local governments. The St. Johns River Water Management District is committed to assisting communities to become more resilient in preparing for and adapting to these changes. Come hear how District staff incorporate resiliency principles every day in their individual programs by identifying, developing, and completing projects for the sustainability of the communities within the district. This presentation will identify specific project examples that can help you and your communities.


• James Schneider, Olsson, "Leveraging Technology to Jump-start Groundwater Management Efforts in California."
"In California, groundwater management has historically lagged most other states. This changed in 2014 when California enacted the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). SGMA required the formation of local groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) tasked with implementing a set of requirements laid out in Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) to accomplish groundwater sustainability within a 20-year period. If local agencies fail to meet the requirements of SGMA, state regulators can take over and the local stakeholders will no longer have a say in the state-mandated regulations. This will require many GSAs to set limits on the amount of groundwater that can be applied to a given irrigated parcel. Water use monitoring programs must be developed in order to implement these limitations. GSAs have recognized that water trading is an important management strategy to allow flexibility to groundwater irrigators who 1) might rather sell their annual allotment of water, or 2) might urgently need additional groundwater to sustain perennial crops. However, water trading programs have the potential to exacerbate and/or cause unintended third-party impacts if poorly designed. Trading programs and standards for individual trades must be developed to ensure protections for domestic water needs, ecosystems, and other landowners. And all of this must be implemented in one of the most heavily irrigated states in the nation in an unprecedented period of time. While these groundwater regulators are facing a daunting task of implementing complicated regulations from the ground up with extreme urgency, a silver lining to the late timing of California’s groundwater management efforts is the software and hardware technology that exist today. Cloud-based data and modeling platforms are being leveraged to accelerate the implementation of management actions and regimes that traditionally took decades to implement into mere years. Other emerging technology is accelerating the quality and accessibility of groundwater data. This presentation will provide several examples of current technology-driven success stories that have emerged to guide groundwater sustainability in California. It is envisioned that these technological applications could have broad applicability as the nation and the world grapple with the issue of sustainable water use into the future.

Prediction, Planning, and Management of Water Resources

Moderator: Megan Rivera

Presenters:

• Megan Rivera, Josh Weiss, and Greg Gates, Hazen and Sawyer, "Review of Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO) for Multi-Objective Water Resources Management"
"While using forecasts to guide reservoir operating strategies is not new, recent improvements in hydrologic forecasts and computing capabilities have led an increasing number of water utilities and resource agencies to explore opportunities to implement forecast-informed operations. Quantitative forecasts are being used by reservoir managers to better manage water supply, water quality, ecosystem, and other objectives. For reservoir water supply systems, using forecasts to manage withdrawals and releases often results in increased reliability and other benefits compared to reservoir operations that do not consider forecasts. The American Meteorological Society defines Forecast-informed reservoir operations (FIRO) as “a reservoir-operations strategy that better informs decisions to retain or release water by integrating additional flexibility in operation policies and rules with enhanced monitoring and improved weather and hydrological forecasts.” (https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Forecast-informed_reservoir_operations accessed 6/4/2021) In this talk, we will review the range of applications of forecasts in reservoir operations based on the type of forecast (e.g., short-term weather, mid-term hydrologic, power prices, timing of spawning) and the way it is incorporated into the operations strategy (from minor adjustment to a central element). We will then focus on the subset of operations defined as FIRO by AMS, providing examples throughout the country. We will highlight lessons learned in development and implementation of FIRO for multi-objective water management. Several examples will be used to illustrate key concepts of FIRO. First, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Operations Support Tool (OST) guides the implementation of FIRO to help DEP protect source water quality and maintain compliance with the EPA’s Filtration Avoidance Determination while protecting water supply reliability and preserving water to meet environmental and other objectives. Second, operating rules have been developed for West Point Lake on the Chattahoochee River that would provide comparable flood protection while raising the rule curve to increase water availably during drought conditions. Finally, SUEZ Water has replaced rule curves with forecast-based triggers on the Hackensack River to better balance reliability and cost."


• Xixi Wang, Old Dominion University, "Next-Generation Rainfall IDF Curves for the Virginian Drainage Area of Chesapeake Bay"
This study develops an innovative approach for creating next-generation intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves that consider nonstationary rainfall and uses this information to create future IDF curves for the Virginian drainage area of Chesapeake Bay. Such curves can be an efficient tool for planning, design, and management of climate-resilient infrastructure. To generate the IDF curves, the observed 15-min rainfall time series for the historic periods and the projected precipitation time series by eleven pairs of GCM and RCM are used. In accordance with the empirical exceedance probabilities, a best distribution is chosen to create existing, projected-historic, and projected-future IDF curves. For a given return period, the projected-historic IDF curves are compared to the existing ones to determine the lower and upper limits of the future IDF curve. The most-probable future IDF curve is determined as the average of the eleven curves corresponding to the GCM-RCM models. In addition, for a given duration and return period, the eleven values are used to create a probability-based IDF curve. Further, the areal precipitation time series for each eight-digit Hydrologic Cataloging Unit are used to create watershed-level future probability-based IDF curves. Moreover, the next-generation IDF curves are compared with the NOAA Atlas 14 precipitation frequency estimates. We will present the approach and preliminary results for the sake of increasing climate resilience.


• Taylor L. Weiss, Arizona State University, AzCATI, "Decision-Model Supported Management of Algal Risks Using the Burge Environmental MiProbe"
Quantitative observation of algae in both the environment and engineered systems is frequently complex, non-continuous, laborious, and expensive—especially in remote areas. For more than a year, the Arizona State University (ASU) Arizona Center for Algal Culture and Innovation (AzCATI) has collaborated on algal applications of the Burge Environmental, Inc. sensor, the MiProbe, on multiple projects. The MiProbe directly measures the response of a biofilm populating an inert (e.g., graphite) surface relative to a reference cell. Originally applied to soil and wastewater monitoring, the microbial sensor response correlates with pH, ORP, DO, TDS and COD probes and have demonstrated correlation to AFDW and photosynthetic rates. The probes are inexpensive and require no calibration, making numerous solar-powered, remote placements feasible. WiFi or cellular modems transmit real-time data for high-performance processing, analysis, and visualization on an open-source platform, MiProbe Cloud. Additionally, MiProbe Cloud can enable automated data integration from multiple sources—including additional probes, weather data, and/or concurrent laboratory data—and was development to integrate with machine learning, AI, and other advanced open-source analysis tools. This data management component is critical for interfacing with real-time, quantitative sensor data for environmental systems management and decision-making through decision-models, including life-cycle and techno-economic analyses (LCAs and TEAs, respectively). We will present two of the significant uses of the probes currently under development. First, in the context of large scale algal pond management and as an early-warning mechanism for disruptions, especially pathogens, which are a significant barrier to algal biofuel production; this work is supported by the US Department of Energy. Second, in the context of their utility in remote environmental monitoring of nuisance algal blooms which threaten critical canal and water processing infrastructure, plus carry the potential for human health risks; this work is supported by the Central Arizona Project. Additional application scenarios are also under development, including mobile drone integration and satellite imagery incorporation, and we will continue to explore the potential of MiProbes for algal applications in both engineered and natural environments for the next several years.