#WaterYouWaitingFor: City of Orlando, FL

Posted on May 29, 2018


We’re profiling the Final Four #WaterYouWaitingFor projects – the winners collected their trophies, goody bags, and All-In ELGL memberships at #ELGL18 but we wanted each project to also get some time to shine on ELGL.org.
View the nominated projects online at the Atlas. Like ELGL, the Atlas believes that local government is strengthened when we share big ideas about infrastructure. ELGL and the Atlas partner to highlight local government projects and programs.


Lisa Henry

City of Orlando, Florida – Streets & Stormwater Division Manager


Explain your award-winning #WaterYouWaitingFor project in 100 words or less.  
The implementation of the Lake Level Monitoring program will enable City staff to monitor the lakes in real-time, making adjustments before storm events to help mitigate flooding of critical infrastructure and residential communities.
This project will allow the City to capture the historical knowledge of the lake management expertise that currently resides in the hearts and minds of our long term staff. We will be able to track, measure and methodically adjust water levels to meet the ever changing weather patterns that are occurring in central Florida.
This project will eventually tie into the National Weather Model for forecasting lake levels based on 2-3 day weather forecasting.
Describe Orlando to someone who has never visited Florida/the region before. 
Very fun, diversified and environmentally conscience City. We have so much more than Theme Parks.  For most of Orlando’s history we’ve been the place everyone wants to visit.
Today, Orlando is also the place where everyone wants to live and do business. List after list has Orlando as one of the fastest growing cities in America. We’re transitioning from our role as the young upstart to being a more mature, global City.
We are doing that by keeping our community safe, generating high quality jobs, and becoming one of the most sustainable cities in America.
Where did this project idea come from? 
Innovation is the mother of necessity.  As climate changes continue to occur, we needed a better way to predict and ultimately manage those changes.
Through technology we can monitor the weather patterns and adjust our lake levels to address intense rain events, hurricane effects and drought conditions.
Share some of the project highlights. 
This project had its beginnings in the early 1990’s when then Stormwater Bureau chief had a vision of an Orlando Unit Hydrograph. The city started with gauge boards that the survey crews would shoot the water elevations every quarter.
We then transitioned to telemetry starting in 2004 utilizing pressure transducers to calculate the water surface elevation from the pressure differential.  There were approximately 67 stations deployed in the City lake system.
In 2015 we began transitioning to cellular because of data losses when using radio frequency.  Our ultimate systems will include pressure transducers, data-loggers and electronic rain gauges.
Share some of the project challenges. 
Time.  It takes a lot of time to plan and implement the data collection network.  It also takes a lot of time to research the options for the individual stations, electric requirements, environmental factors (tree canopy blocking sun on solar panel), easements for equipment when no City land available, etc.
What has been the community response to this project? 
We have a fairly active environmental community that is very supportive of any and every thing that we can do to improve the water quality and recreational enjoyment of our water bodies.
If someone is reading about this project and wants to replicate it in their community, what would your top two pieces of project advice be? 
Determine who will be the core Team members and make sure they have the technical expertise to monitor/maintain the equipment and QA/QC the data.  These are 2 critical areas that need a lot of consideration.

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