Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2009TX324B

Lake Houston Watershed Water Quality Prediction System

Institute: Texas
Year Established: 2009 Start Date: 2009-03-01 End Date: 2010-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $10,000

Principal Investigators: Aarin Teague, Philip Bedient

Project Summary: The increased degradation of influent to Lake Houston is causing increased water treatment cost for the City of Houston’s Drinking Water Operations and has severe public and environmental health implications. The watersheds flowing into Lake Houston are impaired for bacteria and have concerns for nutrients. Therefore hydrologic models and water quality predictions concerning the influent from the watersheds to the lake are key to the operation of the City of Houston drinking water treatment plant. A water quality modeling system based on a distributed hydrologic model (VfloTM) that uses NEXRAD Radar rainfall input, is proposed. The system will be tested in Cypress Creek Watershed as part of a wider Basin effort. Cypress Creek is an urbanizing watershed with significant agricultural activity. As such historic water quality data will be analyzed for loading relationships in conjunction with a wider literature review of land use pollutant loading rates for determination of water quality parameters. These parameters will then be applied to hydrograph output from a VfloTM model. This output will then be evaluated using water quality sampling during storm events, proposed for the Spring of 2009. The water quality model will then be launched for continuous real-time prediction of the water quality from Cypress Creek entering Lake Houston.