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Master Planning Program Notes
by Ben Urbonas, P.E., Chief, Master Planning Program

Planning Projects

Only one planning project was completed in 2002; 20 projects are in progress; and we hope to begin 3 in 2003. The planning activities with our city and county partners continue to be quite active. We now have a total of over 110 watershed-level major drainageway and outfall system plans in our inventory and we will be adding quite a few in the next couple of years. These master plans guide the District's capital program and land development activities by the cities and counties.

Criteria Manual Updates

Several updates and corrections were issued to all three volumes of the Urban Storm Drainage Criteria Manual (Manual) in 2003. Some were quite extensive. For example, the entire Structural BMPs chapter of Volume 3 was updated to adjust recommendations for the details of several BMPs that were necessitated by the feedback we were getting for the field and our own observations. The updated details are an improvement over the old ones. Another major revision was in the storm sewer design protocols. We revised the Manual to be in full agreement with the NeoUDSEWER software.

All revisions and updates for Volumes 1 and 2 are posted under www.udfcd.org/usdcm/vol1&2.htm for downloading. We urge everyone who has our Manual to do so, and replace the outdated pages in the document you own. Volume 3 of the manual can now be downloaded from www.udfcd.org/usdcm/vol3.htm in full. The entire volume, dealing with water quality and BMPs, is being offered to the public for free in electronic form. We will no longer be offering this volume in printed form and suggest all owners (old and new) visit our web site to download the latest versions of each chapter. We will continue to update our Manual as we learn more about the technologies we recommend or national and sate policies, rules and regulations require such changes.

Another important part of the Manual is the software and spreadsheets that support the technical requirements and recommended calculations of drainage and flood control facilities. All of these are also updated on a regular basis and we urge you to check our web site for the latest versions for free downloads. As you have yourself experienced, the technology is evolving rapidly and the only way we can make our latest updates available to everyone is through this form of distribution. So, do not assume you have the latest recommendations or criteria. Check our web site at www.udfcd.org to make sure you do.

District's Software

We now have a more stable version of the CUHP and UDSWM software for downloading. In addition, UDPOND and NeoUDSEWER, both coded in Visual Basic, may also be downloaded. Both have been totally rewritten by Michael O'Brian with the help and guidance of John O'Brian and Prof. James C.Y. Guo. At this time we are working at developing a graphical interface for the preparation of inputs for the current UDSWM package. In addition, we hope to have the entire UDSWM and CUHP packages rewritten in VB.NET in 2003 as a combined software package that will be windows compliant and network capable. In time we hope to integrate the CUHP and UDSWM into a single package with a continuous simulation option.

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