2021 Winter Conference Agenda

9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

[PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP] Floodplain Mitigation Tools and Lessons Learned

Mitigating Flood Risk with a Real-Time Flood Forecasting System
Can a real-time flood forecasting system determine the extent and duration of flooding, at the street level, two to three days into the future with a reasonable degree of accuracy? If so, then it may be possible to increase resiliency by taking mitigative steps prior to a storm’s arrival. This session will present three case studies sharing lessons learned.

Peter Singhofen, PE, President
Streamline Technologies

Kent Boulicault, PE, Principal
Singhofen & Associates

Three Tools to Prioritize Flood Mitigation Projects & Boost Resiliency
With flood risk areas competing for solutions, how do you determine where and how to invest limited resources? This session will provide an overview of three tools to help prioritize flood mitigation projects: level of service, damage cost estimation, and benefit cost analysis. Project examples will be provided to help illustrate practical applications.

Welcome and Opening Address     

Elliot Shoberg, President
Florida Stormwater Association

John J. Truitt, Deputy Secretary
Regulatory Programs, FDEP

1 - Taking the PAIN out of NPDES Reporting - The City of Orlando’s Story
Collecting and analyzing multiple datasets such as roadway assets maintenance, flood control, water quality, public outreach, and construction for NPDES reporting is painful. This session will share how the City of Orlando is tackling this challenge with an innovative approach that is yielding results.

Prasad Chittaluru, PE, PhD, GISP, PMP, President & CEO
EPIC Engineering & Consulting Group

Howard Elkin, Division Manager, Streets & Stormwater Division
City of Orlando

Athena Tipaldos, Assistant Division Manager, Streets & Stormwater Division
City of Orlando

2 - Adoption of Smart Stormwater Ponds in Florida
While continuous monitoring and adaptive control (CMAC) of stormwater ponds has been around for nearly ten years, adoption in Florida is starting to accelerate. This presentation will discuss Florida’s application of smart ponds to improve water quality, mitigate flood risk, and develop market-based opportunities for environmental protection.

Dayton Marchese, PE, Water Resources Engineer
Opti

Mark Thomasson, PE, Executive Vice President
National Stormwater Trust

3 - FSAEF Stormwater BMP Life-Cycle Costing Tool
Determining treatment effectiveness is an important part of project planning, design, grant funding, and ultimately achieving the most efficient investment of resources. However, there is no industry standard for how to go about doing this. While there are standards for BMP efficiencies, there is no recognized standard in Florida for determining life-cycle costing. With treatment effectiveness often being one consideration in water quality grants, the absence of a standard leads to unequitable comparisons between projects. This presentation will reveal the Florida Stormwater Association Educational Foundation’s (FSAEF) recent research project that developed a costing approach methodology and a tool to aide in the development of an industry standard for the state of Florida.

Brett Cunningham, PE, Director of Water Resources
Jones Edmunds

Tim Kelly, PE, CPSWQ, Project Manager Civil & Stormwater
Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions

4 - Business Case for Resilience in Southeast Florida
The costs of a changing climate are expected to be significant, yet the costs of failing to act are expected to be far greater. Understanding the economic impact of sea level rise, flooding, and investments in adaptation and resilience are essential to developing a business case for pre-emptive action.  This presentation will review a project that explores the economic risk of coastal hazards, the economic benefits of adaptation pathways as a function of risk reduction and avoided losses, the value-added benefits associated with resilient investments, and recommended strategies to improve resilience for Southeast Florida.

Amy Eason, PE, Senior Project Manager
AECOM

Anne deBoer, Manager, Sustainable Economics
AECOM

5 - Resiliency Planning! What’s It Going to Take?
The resiliency assessment approach taken for the City of St. Petersburg Lake Maggiore watershed was founded on climate science and a process developed to assess vulnerabilities and prioritize adaptative strategies for different category assets. An adaptive design concept developed for the basin will support the management plan as conditions change.  This presentation will describe an approach where resiliency assessment was based on risk evaluation founded on climate science and a process developed to assess vulnerabilities and prioritize adaptative strategies for different category assets, with the objective to protect a tidally influenced watershed with a management plan that could be implemented over the next four decades.

Dikran Kalaydjian, PE, ENVSP, President
Land & Water Engineering Science

6 - Projecting Stormwater Needs – Reporting Tool
HB 53 passed during the 2021 Session and requires local governments with wastewater or stormwater management systems to complete a 20-year needs analysis for those systems and submit the data to the Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR) – the research and forecasting arm of the Legislature. The analysis required by HB 53 includes a description of the system, the number of future residents served, revenues and expenditures, maintenance costs, etc. The first analysis is due on June 20, 2022, and every five years thereafter. The workshop session will review EDR’s reporting tool and approach on gathering the information. Questions, answers, and discussion will be encouraged.

Michael Bateman, PE, Legislative Analyst
Office of Economic and Demographic Research, Florida Legislature

Welcome and FSAEF Scholarship Presentations

Brett Cunningham, President
FSAEF

9:40 AM - 10:25 AM

7 - Community Playbook for Healthy Waterways: Inspiring Community Action
The Playbook is a curated collection of forty locally-calibrated actionable recommendations for community-wide nutrient management. It prioritizes and coordinates community activity and philanthropy for water quality improvement. Launched in 2021, the community has made progress in coordinating and implementing specific recommended activities.  Join us as we review this tool, share the progress made, and review lessons learned.

Jennifer Shafer, PhD, President and CEO
Shafer Consulting

Jon Thaxton, Senior Vice President for Community Investment
Gulf Coast Community Foundation

8 - Developing and Managing Your Stormwater Capital Improvement Plan
Tarpon Springs is FSA’s Stormwater Program 2021 Outstanding Achievement Award Winner!
Need a stormwater capital improvement plan (CIP), or need to revitalize your current one so that it addresses the stormwater issue while also prioritizing safety, emergency access, maintenance, and property impacts? Learn how the City of Tarpon Springs has developed a CIP giving priority to those projects that bring the most benefit to their community.

Bryan Anderson, PE, ENV SP, Section Director - Stormwater and Environmental
Burgess & Niple

Anthony Mannello, Streets and Stormwater Supervisor
City of Tarpon Springs

Break

9 - Navigating Regulatory Hurdles to Improve Water Quality
State and local funding has been used to test and implement innovative technologies to reduce harmful algal blooms and improve water quality, which has stimulated several new and viable sediment capping products to reduce internal pollutant loads to impaired waterbodies. However, current regulatory policies have become roadblocks to implementation. This presentation will review the results of these studies along with a review of available grant funding to implement a full-scale water quality restoration effort using innovative technologies.

Mary Szafraniec, PhD, PWS, Principal Scientist
Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions

Laurie Smith, CPM, CFM, Manager, Lakes & Stormwater
City of Lakeland

10 - Piney Point: How Local Entities Have Stepped Up to Address the Insult
In March 2021, crews detected a leak in one of the containment walls holding back 480 million gallons of contaminated water at the Piney Point facility.  To address the impending disaster, an unmitigated estimated 215 million gallons of legacy phosphate mining process and seawater was directly discharged into lower Tampa Bay over an initial 10-day period. This presentation will provide an overview of the reported ecological results along with some lessons learned.

Tony Janicki, PhD, President
Janicki Environmental

Ed Sherwood, Executive Director
Tampa Bay Estuary Program

Marcus Beck, PhD, Program Scientist
Tampa Bay Estuary Program

11 - Springs Protection Assessment Using Nitrate Isotope Analysis
Accurately identifying nutrient pollution sources to a waterbody allows for targeted basin or watershed-based management action plans to reduce or eliminate pollutant loadings.  This presentation will focus on the results, data limitations, and resources needed to utilize nitrate isotope analysis for nutrient source identification to springs.

Marion Divers, PhD, GIT, Geologist
Drummond Carpenter

Olivia Warren, GIT, Geologist
Drummond Carpenter