Client
Southwest Florida Management District
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Location
City of Polk City, City of Auburndale, and Polk County Incorporated Area, Florida 
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Start Date
December 2006
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Completion Date
Ongoing

Scope

BCI was selected by the Southwest Florida Water Management District to develop a watershed management plan (WMP) for the Polk City watershed. This project is currently in the study phase, which involves the gathering of all available hydrologic and hydraulic data for preparing the building of hydrologic model. The modeling phase of the project will start at the beginning of 2008.

The WMP is developed based on the Water Management District’s new guidelines and specifications for conducting watershed management plans.  These guidelines were developed jointly by FEMA and the SWFWMD and require rigorous quality control and a high degree of correspondence between the GIS database/mapping element and the associated hydrologic model parameterization and connectivity.

The general purpose of the WMP is to develop a plan that helps water managers to make decisions and design planning programs based on the information generated from the watershed evaluation. The WMP consists of the following tasks: digital topographic information, watershed evaluation, hydrological modeling, flood analysis, floodplain delineation, Digital Flood Insurance Rate Map (DFIRM) generation, surface water resource assessment, and alternative analysis for selection of Best Management Practices (BMPs).