Project Details

Central Texas is known as Flash Flood Alley due to it’s sudden and intense rainfall and hilly topography. Because of this, there are stringent detention requirements to prevent these flash floods. While in most instances, detention ponds prevent flooding and negative downstream impacts, when the development is right on a creek, many times, it does more harm than good to delay the waters inevitable path to the creek. The problem that Cude Engineers was faced with when designing the Brio Apartments in Pflugerville Texas was whether or not to detain at the detriment of the receiving water body, or lobby the city for a variance to take an alternative approach. While the City was unwilling to allow for zero detention, they were willing to offer a variance for a smarter approach.

What Convergent Water Technologies Provided

Convergent Water Technologies supplied the SmartPOND Rotary Weir for the Brio Apartment Project. In collaboration with Cude Engineers, the created a custom application that would place a pressure transducer in the creek that would read the creeks water surface elevation. When the water surface elevation was at a level deemed safe, the SmartPOND rotary weir was to be in the open position. When the creek rose due to a large storm event and reached a level deemed unsafe, the weirs would close, retaining any volume from the apartments in the impoundment. Once the creek receded to a safe level, the weirs slowly opened allowing the water to discharge downstream.

Why The Engineer & Developer Chose SmartPOND

Brio Apartments chose the smartPOND Rotary Weir for several key reasons:

• Lot Yield –For multifamily development projects, viability of the project often relies on the number of apartment units they can get on the project. By only capturing the large storm and allowing the smaller events to go downstream, the developer was able to reduce the size of his pond by 50%, allowing for additional units.
• Safety – Every engineer is responsible for the safety and well being of those downstream. It was imperative to the success of the project and the watershed that they have a solution that wouldn’t contribute to the problem, but instead be a part of the solution.
  Ability to Customize – The team at Convergent Water Technologies likes taking on new challenges as well as solving old problems in new ways. There’s rarely a problem we wont try and tackle.
• Warranty – All SmartPOND systems come with a one year warranty from the date of activation.
• Maintenance and Monitoring – During that 1-year warranty period, the system is monitored remotely and maintained. After the year is up, there are options available for long term maintenance and monitoring.

By incorporating SmartPOND into the Brio Apartment stormwater management plan, the engineer not only reduced his developer pond size and increased the number of units built on the property, but he also helped mitigate downstream flooding.