Hernández Hernández, Jean M.

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    Hydrological and sediment study of the Quebrada de Oro watershed: UPR – Mayagüez stormwater management alternatives
    (2017) Hernández Hernández, Jean M.; Zapata López, Raúl E.; College of Engineering; Pagán Trinidad, Ismael; Rivera Santos, Jorge; Department of Civil Engineering; Harmsen, Eric
    It has been suspected that during the recent decades, rainfall events have increased their intensity and frequency due to atmospheric changes. Because of these changes, regional levels of society have suffered significant damage and become more prone to flooding complications. The University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez has experienced part of these intense rainfall events, which have directly affected the student community and employees due to the floods generated within its land property and by the Quebrada de Oro’s inability to manage this substantial amount of water. This instability, shown by the Quebrada de Oro stream bank has led to problems affecting some elements of the campus’ infrastructure. Moreover, these events suffered on campus also include frequent flooding of the General Student parking lot (‘Area Blanca’ – situated behind the library). These incidents, their frequency, and potential for worsening have generated a desire to study this issue in depth, and encourage the proposition of alternatives towards the mitigation of these damages. In the current study, the hydrological behavior of the Quebrada de Oro’s watershed based on rain events with different recurrences (2, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 years) has been investigated, including how these conditions affected the flows generated by the watershed and surface levels observed in the creek. Furthermore, with the use of RUSLE, an estimation of sediments generated by the watershed will be used to understand the problems of deposited sediments within the creek’s channel system, located inside campus. Due to continuous flooding in the General Students parking lot, alternatives were proposed to mitigate these negative outcomes and provide safety to the students during a future rainfall event. Consequently various alternatives were analyzed, which provided improvements in the parking lot’s mitigation of flood levels. In conclusion, the presented alternatives met the proposed requirements for the mitigation of flood conditions in the parking lot. These alternatives are predicted to last throughout events of up to a 25-year recurrence, and could possibly decrease expected water levels in the Quebrada de Oro. The new culvert exiting near the PR-2 Bridge appears to be the best hydrological mitigation alternative. If not, the next best alternative entails the development of a new culvert parallel to the wall inside the Quebrada de Oro channel to protect the parking lot from the creek’s discharge flow during a flood. When considering the hydrological, hydraulic, and environmental aspects involved these options become the most efficient composite alternatives when combined with the sub-basin of the pond found at the Zoo and its lateral weir situated upstream.