Living on Thick Water

Designing, Planning, & Constructing with Groundwater & Subsidence Management in Mind

Thursday, May 24, 919 St. Charles Avenue

Technical Master Class: 9am-3pm

$50 includes breakfast, lunch, and parking
($40 for AIA, ASCE, ASLA and CMAA members, $30 for DBEs)

Free Public Lecture: 5:30pm-7:00pm

Registration is open for the next Urban Water Series Technical Master Class and Free Public Lecture.

New Orleans is located on ground that, at best, has been described as thick water. Over the last 100 years, New Orleans engineers have encouraged a “pump and pipe” solution to frequent flooding that we now know deprives our soils of much needed hydration – causing subsidence. New approaches to urban water management like green infrastructure and active groundwater management provide a path forward from our subsiding past.

Join the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the City of New Orleans to learn about subsidence, groundwater, and how we can learn to both manage stormwater and preserve our soils. Our speakers include Roelof Stuurman of Deltares, an Amsterdam-based groundwater and hydrogeology expert, and Mead Allison of The Water Institute of the Gulf, a river, deltaic and coastal sedimentary process expert.

The technical master class is well-suited for those in the design, planning, engineering, and construction communities. Professional credits for ASLA, AIA, and ASCE can be earned.

The evening lecture is free and open to the public. During the lecture, speakers will give a general overview of subsidence and groundwater management.

Thank you to the Surdna Foundation for supporting the Urban Water Series.

Seats are limited, so save your spot for the Technical Master Class and Free Public Lecture! For more information, email cale@gnof.org.

Meet the Presenters:

• Roelof Stuurman is a specialist in the integrated management of environment, groundwater and soil. He is also an expert in hydro-geological systems analysis at a regional and local scale in support of spatial planning, environmental and water policy planning & groundwater management. Roelof has more than 35 years’ experience in urban water, groundwater, and subsidence studies as well as eco-hydrology (wetland and brook valley restoration). Since 2006, he has advised numerous international projects such the Urban Water Plan in New Orleans, Rebuild by Design Competition, Living with the Bay (Nassau County NYS), Ganga Basin restoration, rural drinking water supply project in India and recently with the San Francisco Bay Challenge.

 

• An expert on river, deltaic and coastal sedimentary processes, Mead Allison, Ph.D., has researched river delta systems for nearly 25 years. He is one of the foremost experts on the Mississippi River’s sediment transport processes. Prior to joining The Water Institute of the Gulf, he served the University of Texas as Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist at the Jackson School of Geosciences’ Institute for Geophysics. Dr. Allison has held faculty positions at Tulane University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and at Texas A&M University’s Department of Oceanography. He is Professor and chair of the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering at Tulane University in New Orleans. Since joining the Institute in early 2013, Dr. Allison and his group have undertaken a series of observational in support of coastal restoration efforts for the State of Louisiana. These include process studies of the Calcasieu Ship Channel, the West Bay Diversion, the Mississippi River channel, and Barataria Basin and Breton Sound. The basin studies are in support of research to examine the effects of large proposed river diversions.