The Clean Rivers Program was begun in (72 nd TX Leg Session SB 818) Its purpose is to assess the waters of the state and to maintain or improve

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2 The Clean Rivers Program was begun in (72 nd TX Leg Session SB 818) Its purpose is to assess the waters of the state and to maintain or improve water quality. TCEQ administers the program at the state level and contracts with river authorities to run the program at the basin level. The program is partially funded by fees on wastewater discharge and water rights permits. Currently the state is considering an increase in these fee caps to cover funding for all water programs at TCEQ as there is no longer a surplus in the water program fund. The TRA Clean Rivers Program is currently receiving about $832,000 per biennium and as far as I know there are no plans at this time to increase that amount. The emphasis of the CRP is on the collection of water quality data for assessment and regulatory purposes.

3 We recently began the FY contract with TCEQ. The current biennial contract with TCEQ is for approximately $832,000 which covers all expenses for the program including salaries, travel, overhead, and outside expenses. TCEQ contracts with the River Authorities to administer the program in each basin. In our basin we focus on water quality monitoring, public outreach, and special projects.

4 We leverage our funding from the TCEQ by partnering with local agencies on a voluntary basis. These entities are already monitoring for their own purposes. We support these partners to varying degrees based on the additional work needed to meet CRP requirements. Support ranges from monitoring supplies and equipment to covering analytical costs. The partner network has allowed us to receive over 4 to 1 return in value for every dollar we spend with our partners. Currently we have seven partner agencies the cities of Arlington, Grand Prairie, Fort Worth, Irving, and Dallas, as well as Tarrant Regional Water District, and TRA s Lake Livingston Project. We have our own in-house monitoring in addition to the sites monitored by TCEQ field offices. Not including TCEQ sites, the partner network monitors more than 150 sites and 40 parameters on a routine basis. We have recently begun working with NTMWD to include their monitoring in the Clean Rivers Program. We hope to continue expanding the program to include additional cities.

5 So the partner network allows us to obtain much more data than we could using our own resources and at the same time allows us to spend more money on public outreach activities and special projects. We currently have about 55% of our outside expenses allocated to routine water quality monitoring. This includes analytical as well as costs for supplies and equipment which are consumables such as sample bottles and sampling equipment such as pumps and multiprobe meters and parts. 18% is allocated for public outreach activities including the Waterborne Education Center, various trash clean-ups, Texas Stream Team, River Legacy Park, and other educational and outreach activities. 27% is allocated to special projects which include NELAC assistance for our CRWS and LLP labs, maintenance and customization of our EnviroData software, and two other projects which have been proposed but not yet scoped out and finalized.

6 We provide support for several public outreach and education activities through the Clean Rivers Program. Funding for the Texas Stream Team is used for kits, supplies, and a trainer. We provide funding for supplies and equipment at the WEC and River Legacy Park. Several area trash clean-ups are also supported through funding for supplies and landfill fees. Some of the outreach and education activities we participate in include Make a Splash Day at River Legacy Park, UTA Celebrating People and Planet, the DFW Environmental Fair, Haltom City Environmental Days, Waterworks for Houston, Fort Worth Waterama, and Gator Fest in Anahuac. Several of these are geared toward elementary school children and we teach them about ways to prevent water pollution. Others are geared to groups of all ages and we provide information about the Authority and the river. We also participate in a project called World Water Monitoring Day. This is something that everyone can participate in. This program is coordinated by the Water Environment Federation and the International Water Association and is designed to foster interest in local water resources. You can

7 submit your basic water monitoring data collected between March 22 nd to December 31 st to their database. At the end of each year, the coordinators analyze the data and produce a report. Some of the special projects we are currently working on are continuations of existing projects. The NELAC Assistance contract has provided expert help to our CRWS and LLP labs with the process of becoming NELAC certified. Now that both labs are certified, this contract provides for as needed assistance as well as the required annual lab audits. EnviroData is a software package that we purchased to automate our data handling. We maintain a budget for this item to cover annual maintenance fees as well as customization work on an as needed basis. We purchased a software package called EnviroData in the previous contract. Over the last couple of years, we have collected habitat and flow information at all of the urban stream sites monitored by the cities of Fort Worth, Irving, Arlington, and Grand Prairie. We collected data in the summer to catch extreme low flow conditions and in the winter to catch more normal flows that are expected to occur in wetter weather. It appears that this information has been used to classify some of the urban streams as

8 intermittent with and without perennial pools. As you can see from the pictures on the right side of the screen, the urban stream sites cover a wide variety of habitat types. Over this coming summer we plan to visit each of these sites once more after a prolonged dry period to confirm if the sites go completely dry or if they maintain perennial pools. In addition we are planning on conducting the same type of summer and winter site characterizations at our other partner agency sites. These include the City of Dallas, TRWD, and LLP. We have recently purchased a Sontek River Surveyor M9. This piece of equipment uses acoustic Doppler technology to measure flow and to obtain bottom morphology. We are also in the process of purchasing a boat so that we can do survey work on the river and reservoirs.

9 These are some of the results of a river run conducted last summer upstream of US 79 near Oakwood. Upstream and downstream images were taken at each site as well as bank angle measurements. The River Surveyor outputs a map of the wetted river channel and the velocity of the water in each cell across the river. These velocities are added together and averaged over a series of passes to give a total flow. At this site the flow was about 2100 cfs.

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11 The draft 2010 assessment is now available to view online at the website shown here. This assessment covers the 7 year period from December 1, 2001 to November 30, In some cases, data for an additional 3 years were used if necessary. The assessment is based on groups of sites within a classified or unclassified segment called assessment units. Within each classified segment there can be any number of assessment units. Unclassified segments are typically tributaries to the main segment and are identified as the main segment number followed by a letter. The following maps are a summary of the assessment. For the purposes of this summary, all findings are grouped together to show the highest level of attainment or impairment within each segment watershed. This includes both classified and unclassified segments and assessment units.

12 There are several issues related to low dissolved oxygen levels throughout the basin. Some of these issues are due to low flows and high temperatures while others are due to eutrophication.

13 Elevated bacteria levels are a concern throughout the Main Stem of the river. A majority of the issues are related to wildlife, especially birds, lifestock, and pet waste. The TCEQ is currently in the process of proposing new standards based on actual levels of contact rather than a presumed full submersion contact.

14 The ban on fish consumption due to contaminants in fish tissue remains for the portion of the upper Main Stem from the Lake Worth Dam to the confluence with the East fork. There is also an issue with Hg in fish tissue in Lake Madisonville located in segment 803.

15 General uses include parameters such as the dissolved solids which use Cl, TDS, and SO4 and ph as well as chlorophyll a and nutrients which are on separate maps. Solids are an issue in the upper West Fork, the lower East Fork, and Lake Livingston. Some of these issues can be linked to agricultural practices. In addition, there are issues with elevated ph in Cedar Creek, Lake Livingston, and the Main Stem below Livingston. In general the ph issues are related to eutrophication.

16 Concerns for chlorophyll a are widespread throughout the basin. These concerns are generally related to elevated nutrient levels and eutrophication in the reservoirs.

17 Nutrients are also a concern throughout the basin. These concerns typically relate to sources such as agricultural and residential use of fertilizers and effluent from treatment plants.

18 All waterbodies in the basin that are used for public water supply are fully supporting or have no concerns.

19 The draft report is available online to review and comment on. If you have any comments on the report please send them to me via by April 20th. In order to get various looks at the data and get a big picture look at what s going on in the basin, we looked at both the 2008 and preliminary 2010 TCEQ assessments. We also developed our own in-house 5-year analysis which looked at data for individual stations rather than assessment units. This is a draft so the formatting and some of the content is not complete. We felt that the water quality section was the most important and have that in a near complete draft. Figures and maps will be finalized after all the comments are in.

20 The following slides describe the methodology used for the data analysis portion of the Basin Summary Report.

21 Describes methodology used to run trend analysis.

22 Describes difficulty in dealing with censored data.

23 Describes initial data selection parameters.

24 Describes methods used for determining normality.

25 Describes bin method.

26 Flow chart for data processing.

27 Comparison of R squared values of those data that were determined to have trends.

28 Examples of trend analysis discussion in the Basin Summary Report.

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