The Smart Watershed Network grant funded project was submitted and approved through the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s (MWDOC) 2018 Future Supply Actions Funding Program. The project involves development of a flow monitoring network within the storm drain network of the Aliso Creek Watershed. In facilitation of this research, the storm drain data will be integrated directly with Moulton Niguel Water District’s (MNWD) existing water metering data network. Flow monitoring data will be used to populate information in a new cloud-based data management, integration, and analytics space. Data feeds and applied algorithms developed in the analytics platform will provide comprehensive watershed information and scenario results to support planning and decision making at multiple scales.
The Smart Watershed Network will provide information and tools to evaluate the sustainable use of urban runoff and stormwater as a potential water supply within the Aliso Creek Watershed. The project will improve resiliency of the region’s water supply by providing a new way to look at the urban water balance to identify potential resource recovery projects. The project advances the field of knowledge in urban runoff recovery and provides a methodology and tools that can be applied to both other Metropolitan Member Agencies as well as water agencies throughout the region.
MWDOC is the Lead Member Agency, supported by MNWD and the County of Orange as Co-Program Managers. supported the grant proposal effort and is contracted through the County of Orange as the technical expert consultant responsible for developing and installing the flow monitoring network within the storm drain network of the Aliso Creek Watershed. NV5 has implemented Task 3 of the Smart Watershed Network Project, which includes site reconnaissance, installation, calibration, and maintenance of 60 flow monitoring stations connected to MNWD’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) network. Conductivity sensors have been deployed at 20 of the flow monitoring stations where a probe can be continuously submerged.
