Contact: Lisa Prcin, 254-774-6008, lprcin@brc.tamus.edu
LAMPASAS – Those interested in the Lampasas River Watershed Protection Plan are invited to attend the Lampasas River Watershed Partnership meeting April 19.
The meeting, which is free and open to the public, is being hosted by Texas A&M AgriLife Research and will be held at the Lampasas County Farm Bureau Building at 1793 U.S. Highway 281 in Lampasas.
Registration will be at 5:30 p.m. with the meeting to begin at 6 p.m.
“This meeting will address a number of projects relating to the Lampasas River, including the results of a recently concluded water quality management program that was administered by the Hill Country Soil and Water Conservation District, as well as the beginning of the new project that continues the original efforts,” said meeting host Lisa Prcin, AgriLife Research associate and Lampasas River Watershed coordinator.
Lori Hazel, water resources forester with the Texas A&M Forest Service, Temple, will be on hand to give a real-time demonstration on The Plan My Land Operation online tool.
“This free web-based application provides users with tools to locate and map their property, identify sensitive areas including streams, wet areas and steep slopes, and buffer these special features,” she said. “It also allows users to determine characteristics of mapped soil types such as rutting potential and erosion hazard, calculating the watershed area for a selected point, and determining the elevation profile of roads or trails. Users are then able to save and print reports with operational considerations and best management practice recommendations.”
Prcin said the meeting will also explore the next steps in efforts to address potentially failing septic systems in the watershed.
“At our last partnership meeting we discussed the ongoing efforts to map existing on-site sewage systems, and now we need to determine how the partnership would like to proceed,” she said.
There will also be a discussion about several new educational programs on the horizon, which will be open to citizens of the watershed, she said.
The partnership is a voluntary group of local stakeholders who have been working to improve and protect the water quality in the Lampasas River watershed, Prcin said. The program is funded by a Clean Water Act nonpoint source grant from the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A meeting agenda can be found at http://lampasasriver.org/.
For more information, contact Prcin at 254-774-6008 or lprcin@brc.tamus.edu.
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