Regional Stormwater Monitoring Program
Through an RFP process, Atkins (in association with Freese & Nichols; Dougherty, Sprague Environmental Inc.; and TTI Environmental Laboratories) was awarded a contract to assist the smaller entities of Arlington, Garland, Irving, Plano, Mesquite, TxDOT-Dallas, and NTTA with equipment monitoring and deployment, field trip preparation, chemical sample retrieval, and post-sampling activities. Atkins is also assisting the cities of Garland and Plano with biological monitoring. Dallas and Fort Worth continue to use their own staff to conduct chemical and biological monitoring. The regional monitoring plan calls to chemically monitor 24 watersheds and perform rapid bioassessments within 12 watersheds across the region, with substantial overlap between the two sampling approaches. Most entities are chemically sampling one watershed in their jurisdiction for two consecutive years beginning January 1, 2012 and then moving to a second watershed for another two years.
Goal
To continue the assessment of urban impact on receiving stream water quality and to document any improvement from best management practice implementation.
Participants
Cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Irving, Plano, Garland, and Mesquite, and two transportation agencies—Texas Department of Transportation-Dallas District and North Texas Tollway Authority
Sampling Details
The regional partners have created a new sampling plan that will effectively monitor at least 50 percent of their jurisdictional area by the end of the third program term. As in the second program term, this plan proposes to continue in-stream watershed monitoring, but seeks to obtain greater statistical robustness of the data by increasing the sampling period at each location to a minimum of two years.
Twenty-four watersheds will be chemically monitored for 17 parameters and biological monitoring will be performed within 12 watersheds across the region, with substantial overlap between the two sampling approaches. Most entities are chemically sampling one watershed in their jurisdiction for two consecutive years and then moving to a second watershed for another two years. Only the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Garland, and Plano are conducting biological monitoring.
For more sampling details, visit the following links:
Monitoring watersheds maps: 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015
Interactive station map and data viewer
Monitoring Report
Final Comprehensive Report (2011-2015)
Annual reports are available upon request. Please contact NCTCOG Staff at EandD@nctcog.org.