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Lotus Water
Project Updates - Tis the Construction Season!
Project Updates - Tis the Construction Season!
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Lotus Water
2023 Company Retreat
2023 Company Retreat

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Project Updates - Tis the Construction Season!

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2023 has been a busy, busy year for construction projects at Lotus Water, and as the year wraps up, here’s a sneak peek on construction progress.

Sonoma Ranch Institute - Sonoma County, CA

Sonoma Ranch Institute—a vision for a learning laboratory of design, regenerative agriculture, and sustainable land stewardship—is deep into the construction of Phase Two, which includes grading the majority of the site, establishing new road alignments, installing site utilities and irrigation, and constructing new conveyance swales and bioretention basins. The site has made significant progress and the contractor is racing to finish work within the onsite stormwater reservoir before El Niño kicks into full gear this rainy season. This 7 acre-foot reservoir, adapted to meet the site’s sustainability goals of self-sufficient water use, will eventually capture and store rainfall to meet sitewide irrigation and fire prevention water needs.

California College of the Arts - San Francisco, CA

A year after the California College of the Arts (CCA) extension campus in San Francisco resumed again in 2022, construction is humming along with the campus’ massive indoor-outdoor structure rising above the entire superblock. Surrounding street improvements for the project have also been approved after several rounds of review with the City. Check out the live-feed cam of the campus’ ongoing progress here!

Mission Bay Bayfront Park P-22 - San Francisco, CA

Part of the open-space network along the new Mission Bay waterfront, Park P-22 has made significant progress in grading the site and adding terrain through geofoam and backfill. All bioretention basins have been excavated and lined, while trees and planting installation for the basins and park have begun to take shape in time for the start of the Warrior’s regular season.

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And the Winner is....

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2022 was quite a year for Lotus! Having the opportunity to work on projects that tackle important water challenges and community priorities is itself immensly rewarding, and getting recognized with industry and professional awards — especially multiple awards — just sweetens the pot. Lotus is grateful for all the hard work our staff and project partners dedicate to seeking out innovative solutions that reimagine how we manage and protect our shared water resources. Here are just some of our achievements in 2022:

Orange Memorial Park Regional Stormwater Capture + Reuse Project

  • Project of the Year, American Public Works Association (APWA) of Silicon Valley

  • Environment + Parks Award, American Public Works Association (APWA) of Silicon Valley

  • Outstanding Stormwater Capture & Use Project, California Stormwater Quality Association (CASQA)

  • Outstanding Environmental Engineering Project, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) San Francisco

city + regional officials and project partners celebrate the project’s ribbon-cutting in June 2022.

Completed in spring 2022, the Orange Memorial Park Regional Stormwater Capture + Reuse Project is the first project of its kind in Northern California, diverting flows from the Colma Creek Flood Control Channel into the park for pretreatment and harnessing the treated water for park irrigation and replenishing the groundwater aquifer.

Lotus has been honored to receive multiple awards in recognition of the project’s innovative design, which not only achieves multiple interagency goals around water quality, flood resilience, and sustainability, but was funded in part by a $6M collaborative grant negotiated between the City of South San Franciso/Lotus, Caltrans, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB). The success of this project is helping pave the way for other regional stormwater projects being planned around the Bay Area.

San Francisco Civic Center Public Space Plan

  • Honor Award - Analysis and Planning Category, American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)

Image Credit: CMG

Recently selected to receive the 2022 ASLA Honor Award in the Analysis and Planning Category, the Civic Center Public Space Plan develops a vision for transforming the heart of the City of San Francisco into a thriving public realm that meets multiple objectives—including inclusion, community, diversity, and resilience. Lotus Water collaborated with the consultant team—led by CMG—and various city agencies and stakeholder groups to develop a district-scale green infrastructure and water reuse measures ranging from detention, infiltration, and passive harvest-reuse irrigation all integrated into the redesigned social spaces.

The proposed sustainable water management plan could save 7.6 million gallons of drinking water, capture 2.3 million gallons of stormwater, and divert 5.5 million gallons of wastewater from entering the city's combined sewer system annually. The district-scale water system also proposes to provide an emergency supply of potable water during natural disasters.

Congratulations to all the teams - let’s carry that positive momentum into the new year!

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Upper Islais Creek: A New Approach to Community Flood Resiliency

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Prior to development and building of the I-280 freeway, Islais Creek flowed along what is now Alemany Boulevard, making its way through San Francisco from the city’s southern boundary out to the Bay. The Cayuga and Lower Alemany areas of San Francisco sit along this low-lying historic creek path and represent two of the most challenging flood problem areas within the City. After years of engineering analysis, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) proposed a 10-foot diameter tunnel to address the flooding in these areas. However, seeing that larger storms could still result in flooding and that the benefits of the tunnel project were limited to a smaller subset of San Francisco residents, the SFPUC also asked that a watershed-wide alternative be investigated, one that could provide comparable flood resilience as the tunnel while spreading more environmental and community benefits to a wider spectrum of residents. This request led to the Upper Islais Creek Watershed Flood Resiliency Project and development of the Upper Islais Creek Watershed Plan (the Plan).

To create the Plan, Lotus and the project team developed new methods of analyzing and quantifying long-term flood resilience and community benefits. The team conducted 2-D hydraulic and hydrologic (H&H) modeling analyses over a wide range of storms to create new multi-storm metrics and visual outputs that displayed how flood depth, risk, and damage varied based on different proposed improvements. The team also integrated new environmental and social benefit metrics and visual outputs into the analysis, such as increased biodiversity, reduced heat stress, and increased access to green space

The expected annualized flood depth (EAFD) shows the flood depth calculated by spreading out multiple storm probabilities and magnitudes equally over time (a discrete time period is not selected). Annualized depth does not mean the depth shown on the map would be seen every year (because this a longer term averaging of flood depths). While EAFD does not directly translate into an immediately usable statistic, it provides for comparison across projects visually showing which areas are expected to see the deepest flooding most frequently. This can be recategorized into a “risk score” to provide more value. (Lotus + Pathways Climate Institute)

Using the new approaches, the team developed the Plan—which includes 100 acres of drainage management area (DMA) for green infrastructure to be constructed over 15 years and 7 million gallons (MG) of storage to be constructed over 8 years—that together will soak up stormwater and slow down the combined sewer flows to attenuate peak flows during flooding events. It also includes multi-purpose floodable open space as part of a protect corridor that keeps flooding from even the most extreme storm events away from people and property, providing improved long-term resilience that factors in the impacts of climate change. The protect corridor also reconfigures the streetscape to improve bike and pedestrian safety, reduce noise and air quality impacts, and increase neighborhood connectivity. The Plan reimagines the surface of the city into multi-function roadways and spaces configured to safely manage larger storms while also providing additional community benefits.

Working closely with the city and a multi-disciplinary team, Lotus was instrumental in analyzing the green infrastructure and storage locations to optimize flood reduction, while also finding synergies with other city agency projects planned in this location, to maximize multi-benefits and leverage combined funding opportunities. As the impact of climate change on infrastructure systems and our communities is felt more and more frequently, a new way of planning, designing, and funding projects for future conditions is needed. Lotus is excited to continue our collaboration with the SFPUC to be leaders in this field.

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Breaking Ground: New California College of the Arts Campus

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Despite a prolongued delay due to the ongoing pandemic, construction for the new California College of the Arts (CCA) extension campus in San Francisco succesfully resumed in 2022. The CCA gathered with the community, city officials, and the project team in November to officially celebrate with a ceremonial groundbreaking and reception showcasing the campus’ vision of sustainability.

Designed by a team led by Studio Gang, the new campus will feature overlapping courtyards and plazas that tie in a campus vision of interdisciplinary practice, engagement, and connection to the surrounding urban neighborhood. Both the construction process and the completed campus’ functionality are meant to be resource efficient. Lotus provided all civil engineering design for the campus and public realm spaces from concept phase through final design, and continues to provide support during construction.

 

live webcam of the work site

“To fuel culture and industry, a great city needs a great art school. CCA is building the most exciting urban art and design campus in the country, the only independent, privately endowed art and design school in Northern California. We educate students to meet the many challenges of our world with creative problem-solving, to become the innovators and game-changers of the future,” said Stephen Beal, President of CCA. “We know that diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to innovation and that educating students from diverse backgrounds is essential to realizing the full potential of art and design to positively impact the future of our communities,” said President Beal. “These valued organizations share our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the arts and design. Together, we are empowering talented students from historically underinvested communities to focus not only on their education but on becoming creative leaders who will make powerful contributions to shape our world.”

We’re excited to watch this project unfold and come to life!

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Water Needs in the Bay Area's Vulnerable Communities

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A Regional Water Needs Assessment report, led by the Disadvantaged Community and Tribal Involvement (DACTI) Program and funded by the Integrated Regional Water Management Program's (IRWM’s) Proposition 1, was released in September 2022. The report is the culmination of four years of research and findings from 13 individual needs assessment processes that were conducted between 2017 and 2021 by community-based partners—from a Tribal needs assessment process administered by five Tribal Outreach Partners and from the peer-to-peer needs assessment—to understand how people experiencing homelessness or poverty are accessing water for drinking, sanitation, and hygiene. Lotus’ Community-Involvement Planner, Maddie Duda, was the lead author and community liaison for the report.

The needs assessments revealed how strikingly similar priorities for water management are across the participating Disadvantaged Communities and Tribes. Many communities shared:

  • a distrust for tap water quality and safety

  • concerns about flooding related to storm surges, sea level rise, and groundwater rise

  • concerns about lack of access to green space and nature — including creeks, rivers, and the ocean — for recreation.

The report’s Regional Connections section summarizes these priorities, best practices for making grant programs more equitable and accessible to Disadvantaged Community groups and Tribes, and other overall recommendations from the San Francisco Bay Area IRWM Region DACTI Program.

This report is the product of the collective work of many partners that was spearheaded by DACTI with a goal of amplifying the voices of DACTI groups and people experiencing homelessness, and incorporating their needs into the planning process. Ultimately, the report serves to keep the San Francisco Bay Area region accountable to achieving the California Right to Water law enacted in 2012 that guarantees that “every human being has a right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.”

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San Mateo County Streets Reimagined

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When is a street not just a street?

What if the streets in our communities were better designed to provide safety and protection for pedestrians and cyclists, help increase resilience against the effects of climate change, and beautify our neighborhoods?

BEFORE

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

To take the leap toward sustainable streets throughout the county, the City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County (C/CAG) created the San Mateo Countywide Sustainable Streets Master Plan in collaboration with Caltrans under the Climate Adaptation Planning Grant Program. This long-term planning effort builds on years of watershed modeling and stakeholder input, and takes a closer look at how and where to build sustainable streets in San Mateo County that integrate stormwater management with local priorities, like bike and pedestrian mobility, transit improvements, climate change adaptation, and more. The plan also includes a down-scaled climate change analysis to better understand the potential future precipitation related impacts from climate change and how green stormwater infrastructure can help adapt to changing conditions.

Lotus—along with key project partners Alta Planning, Paradigm Environmental, and Urban Rain Design—worked with C/CAG to identify and prioritize sustainable street projects throughout the County, developing a scoring methodology to prioritize projects and a companion Green Infrastructure Tracking Tool website that summarizes sustainable infrastructure in San Mateo County and the benefits it provides for stormwater capture and climate resiliency.

Page through the complete plan and its associated documents here.

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Another GI Plan in the Books!

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MenloPk_GI_Plan_LW_20190717.JPG

As part of its obligations to regulate stormwater runoff pollutants under NPDES MS4 Phase I requirements, the City of Menlo Park has adopted a Green Infrastructure Plan for Stormwater (GI Plan) that demonstrates a shift from traditional “gray” infrastructure, which channels untreated runoff directly into San Francisco Bay, to a more resilient and sustainable stormwater system that integrates “green” infrastructure strategies. Along with its teaming partners, Lotus helped establish how source control, redevelopment requirements (C.3), green streets, regional capture projects, LID retrofits, and additional City policies can collectively combine to meet runoff capture targets cost-effectively. Dive into the complete document here.