A public stakeholder meeting will be held online on Jan. 26 from 2-4 p.m. to continue discussions on the Rowlett Creek Watershed Characterization Project.
The meeting will address water quality concerns, pollutants and impairments of Rowlett Creek. The virtual meeting will require advance registration at https://tx.ag/RCWCPMeeting.
The project is a collaboration between the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, City of Plano, Southern Methodist University, North Texas Municipal Water District and the Trinity River Authority.
Monthly public meetings will be held to determine watershed goals and to identify acceptable methods to address water quality. This meeting will be the second of six meetings scheduled as part of this phase of the Rowlett Creek Watershed Characterization Project.
Stakeholders in the watershed are invited to solicit their input on the plan’s goals and objectives. Key stakeholder groups input will be crucial to the development of the project’s success.
Rowlett Creek impact, project aim
“This project aims to address water quality impairments and concerns in Rowlett Creek by characterizing water quality conditions across the watershed, which will help understand the sources and locations of pollutant loadings,” said Fouad Jaber, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension specialist in integrated water resources management, Dallas.
Water quality monitoring supplemented by existing water quality data will be the basis for the watershed characterization, he said.
Rowlett Creek flows through the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex cities of Plano, Garland, McKinney, Frisco, Allen and Murphy, and discharges into the City of Dallas Lake Ray Hubbard. Rowlett Creek was placed on the Texas list of impaired bodies in 2014 for bacteria. Rowlett Creek is also listed as a concern for nitrate.
“Analysis of the data will provide information on the sources and causes of impairments and concerns,” he said. “It will also allow us to quantify pollutant loadings that will assist in the development of a voluntary management plan for the watershed in the future.”
For more information, go to https://agrilife.org/lid/rowlett-creek-watershed-characterization/ or contact Jaber at fouad.jaber@ag.tamu.edu.
This project is funded through a Texas nonpoint source grant from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with matching funds provided by the local partnership group, Southern Methodist University and AgriLife Extension.
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