Project Work Plan
BRA will facilitate public participation and coordinate stakeholder involvement to ensure that decision-making is founded on local input and that watershed planning activities are successful. BRA will provide logistical support for public meetings. At a minimum, public stakeholder meetings shall consist of an organizational/kick-off meeting, a source survey design meeting, a meeting presenting results from initial data analysis and the geographical information system (GIS) inventory, a Texas Watershed Steward Program workshop, two project update meetings during the middle of the project, a meeting presenting data analysis results, and a meeting presenting final technical reports.
BRA will coordinate with Texas AgriLife Extension Service to host a Texas Watershed Steward Program workshop focused on the study area through TSSWCB project 07-09, Statewide Implementation of the Texas Watershed Steward Program. BRA will develop and disseminate educational materials to watershed stakeholders, including, but not limited to, flyers, brochures, letters, and news releases. BRA will develop, host and maintain an internet webpage for the dissemination of project information.
BRA will develop a Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) to ensure data of known and acceptable quality are generated and used in this project. The QAPP will be consistent with the TSSWCB Environmental Data Quality Management Plan and various TCEQ guidelines for monitoring procedures and methods.
BRA, working with Texas A&M University Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering (TAMU BAEN), will develop a comprehensive GIS inventory for the study area.
TSSWCB, in cooperation with Texas A&M University Spatial Sciences Laboratory, will provide BRA a current land use classification, based on 2004-2006 imagery, for the study area through TSSWCB project 08-52, Classification of Current Land Use/Land Cover for Certain Watersheds Where TMDLs or WPPs Are In Development.
BRA will design and conduct a watershed source survey that better characterizes the possible sources of bacteria loadings. Local stakeholders and technical experts will be consulted in the development of the source survey, which will represent warm and cool seasons and low and high flow conditions. Locations of possible bacteria sources identified during the source survey will be incorporated into the GIS inventory. To aid in targeting load reduction scenarios, BRA will assess recreation use of waterbodies in the study area by conducting user surveys.
To provide sufficient water quality data to characterize bacteria loadings across the various flow regimes, BRA will conduct routine ambient monitoring at 10 sites once every two weeks. Currently, routine ambient monitoring is conducted quarterly at 1 station by BRA (16395). BRA may conduct targeted watershed monitoring at various sites throughout the study area under different seasonal and meteorological conditions. BRA will conduct automated stormflow monitoring at 5 sites during 12 storm events. BRA will conduct effluent monitoring at 3 WWTFs once every two weeks and during 12 storm events. Coordination between TPDES permittees and the TCEQ will be required in order to sample effluent discharges. BRA will establish, and maintain, continuous flow monitoring gages at 5 sites (1 per segment). BRA will conduct biological monitoring at 5 sites (1 per segment) once per year assessing stream health and biological communities. BRA will post monitoring data to the BRA website in a timely manner.
To assess and identify different sources contributing to bacteria loadings, BRA will collaborate with Texas AgriLife Research to conduct Bacterial Source Tracking (BST). BRA will conduct library-independent BST utilizing the Bacteroidales polymerase chain reaction (PCR) genetic test for human, ruminant, horse, and swine markers. Additionally, BRA will conduct limited library-dependent BST and analyze E. coli isolates utilizing the enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus PCR (ERIC-PCR) and RiboPrinting (RP) combination method. This will serve to confirm that the sources of E. coli and Bacteroidales are comparable and to determine the need for development of a local source library should intensive library-dependent BST be employed in the future. Results will be compared to the Texas Known Source Library.
To determine bacteria load reductions needed to achieve water quality standards, BRA, working with TAMU BAEN, will conduct a Load Duration Curve (LDC) analysis of all historic and existing water quality monitoring data from the study area. LDCs will be developed for at least one critical index site per segment. LDCs shall be consistent with both EPA's An Approach for Using Load Duration Curves in the Development of TMDLs and EPA's Options for Expressing Daily Loads in TMDLs. Then, using water quality monitoring data collected through this project, BRA will refine the developed LDCs.
To estimate loadings from various sources and to identify critical loading areas within the watersheds, BRA, again working with TAMU BAEN, will conduct watershed modeling for the study area. Utilizing information from the GIS inventory, watershed source survey, SWQM, and BST, and in combination with the LDCs, BRA will develop a spatially explicit or mass balance model, such as the Spatially Explicit Load Enumeration Tool (SELECT), for each of the five watersheds in the study area.