happy #maneymonday!!! got to start my week off with a site visit to Able Pump Station (again hahaha) it's Dallas' newest pump station conveying stormwater over the levees and away from downtown (though Charlie 2 PS is currently under construction on the west levee by the Army Corps of Engineers)!

when on a trip to San Antonio, you GOTTA check out the River Walk (and I'VE gotta check out the flood control structures that help keep downtown safe from flooding!)

#maneymonday, again? no way!!! enrichment is VERY important! so this is your reminder to take a break, go outside, and kick around a fruit for a while! (preferably large and round) it also makes a great hydrating snack to gnaw on once you're good and tuckered 😌🍉

drove a lot this weekend!!! 13 & I visited Kerrville/San Antonio to celebrate @goodandslimy.bsky.social's birthday (HAPPY B-DAY ARLO🥳!!!) anyways, expect posts soon abt various the drainage and flood control things we saw down here! for now, here's some water storage tanks we saw on the drive down:

thinking about the improvised drain I saw in the alley behind one of my fave restaurants (Snuffer's 😈) where someone just drilled a bunch of holes in a welded-together sheet of diamond metal 💀

IT'S LITERALLY HER !!!!

!!!!! :D

woah what's that? it's a brand new ref sheet of Arin by @goldpeach.bsky.social! ✨🌵🌧️ I've been gradually piecing ideas together for a new ref for AGES, so finally seeing it all come together feels like rain in the desert!

while on a walk the other day after a little bit of rain, I got a neat view of some open bridge deck drainage in action!! all down the bridge you could see little columns of water droplets falling from the drains (at least the unclogged ones lol)

the Federal Highway Administration actually did a really good YouTube video on grate inlet hydraulics that demonstrates this nicely (lines drawn in for visualization purposes)

re: flow arrows, they literally make these vaned grates with arrows to indicate proper orientation BECAUSE IT MATTERS curved vane/tilted bar grates are typically quite hydraulically efficient compared to conventional grates, but placing them in the wrong direction TANK their efficiency

I can't even fathom why they did this either even if it was in a sag (local low point where stormwater ponds with no other exit, which it's not), do you really gain that much capacity by adding 2 grates while ruining the efficiency for all 5??? AND they're so clogged they don't even seat right 😭

still haunted by this jank curb-grate inlet I saw on the way to a bar in Uptown... not only did they orient the Type-L grates so that the vanes are perpendicular to the gutter flow direction, half of them are pointing AWAY from the inlet (see the flow arrows on the grates) 😭

happy #maneymonday!!! 🎉 I hope everyone else is looking forward to the short work week! I can't fathom what we're meant to be celebrating, but I'll take a three-day weekend! 🎆 stay safe and hydrated out there!!!

it's #maneymonday!!! 🐾 I hope everyone else who went to TFS this weekend was also up to their elbows in good times! it's always nice getting to see so many new and familiar faces 🥰

LMAO no it's not, it kinda defeats the purpose of a lock if 1) it's open to tampering and 2) it's not actually able to lock against the ring of the manhole frame as for how it got that way, who knows... it seems to happen sometimes, but I figure it's either tampering or careless convenience lol

ever wonder what the underside of an inlet cover looks like? here's one I saw on a walk near White Rock Lake! this side gives a better view of the hairpin spring locking mechanism used to try and keep the covers in place. the top side looks a bit like this third pic from a similar model in Denton!

boyfriends are good for many things, but one of them is listening to be yap about water ALL the time!!! :3 (base by @houndtombs.bsky.social and colored by my bf @13problemcat.bsky.social!)

happy first #maneymonday of pride🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ I'm realizing that I've been on HRT for nearly three and a half years now, what a ride! in some ways so much has changed, and in others, things are delightfully the same. here's to more good changes this month and beyond! 💕 (AMAZING icon by @sakkiye.bsky.social)

photo dump of a few final pics taken from around the Wetlands!

While we only got to spend a few hours there, the Sweetwater Wetlands was a great reminder of how conservation of the environment and water resources can go hand in hand. It was a very unique experience for an equally unique project!

The SRF also has 10 on-site wells to recover the stored water when demand is higher in the summer. From there, it's pumped to the Reclaimed WTP and distributed via the Recycled Water System to provide irrigation across Tucson (preserving previous drinking water supplies in the process)!

Despite the conservational and educational benefits of the Wetlands, the real water resources benefits come from the 11 basins that recharge the Tucson Aquifer. As much as 26,000 acre-ft/yr of treated water from the ANWRF can be directed to the basins for storage and treatment within the Aquifer!

However, the Wetlands had already fostered a rich ecosystem and served as a public amenity, providing educational trails for local schools/communities, and a hotspot for birdwatching! 👀 So from 2014 on, treated water was supplied by the ANWRF to continue to maintain the Wetlands and its habitats!

After a little over a decade and a half of operation, changes to the Clean Water Act lead to the replacement of the RRWWTP with the ANWRF in 2013, which used more advanced nutrient removal processes and meant the Wetlands were no longer needed for their original purpose of treating backwash water.

When designed in 1995, the Wetlands were meant to receive and treat backwash water from filters in the new Reclaimed WTP. Water was split between two treatment trains that send water through an initial settling basin, then to a larger polishing basin, before finally flowing to the recharge basins.

Unlike the recharge basins on the west bank of the Santa Cruz River (constructed before the Wetlands, between 1989-1991) or to the north (constructed in 2014), the basins on the east bank (RB 5-8) were constructed alongside the Wetlands in 1997 and directly receive water treated by the Wetlands.

The Sweetwater Wetlands are part of a larger project, the Sweetwater Recharge Facility, located on the Santa Cruz River just south of the Agua Nueva Water Reclamation Facility and the former Roger Road WWTP. The main purpose of the SRF is to recharge groundwater resources using WWTP effluent!