Environmental scientists from the Nature Conservancy are finalizing plans to install equipment at three Vero Beach communities that will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to measure and reduce the quantities of harmful nutrients released from stormwater retention ponds into the Indian River Lagoon.
The Nature Conservancy is hoping the state will kick in $1.5 million for the Indian River pilot program. The Conservancy will partner with the University of Florida to monitor water quality.
County commissioners recently agreed to send letters of support to the leaders of both chambers of the Florida Legislature.
The CMAC equipment is ready for installation as soon as the agreements are finalized with the HOAs of the three communities, said James Byrne, director of strategy and policy for the Nature Conservancy’s Florida chapter.
“Ultimately, these innovative and out-of-the-box ideas are important because we are determined to protect the Indian River Lagoon,” said Kylie Yanchula, director of the county’s Natural Resources Department. “Anything we can do to optimize the performance of stormwater treatment systems is going to be critically important to protecting that water body.”
Stormwater retention ponds reduce pollution and erosion by retaining runoff during and after storms. Instead of rushing downhill toward ditches and canals that empty into the biologically diverse estuary that is the county’s defining feature, water laden with fertilizer, pet waste, oil, gasoline and other pollutants drains into ponds.
There, ideally, it sits quietly while pollutants and sediment settle out of the upper water so that it is much cleaner when discharged. The ponds also clean water as it seeps into the water table, with sand and soil acting as filters. In addition, retention ponds reduce erosion, a source of sediment pollution that can cloud the lagoon’s water, cutting off sunlight essential to seagrass, a foundation of the ecosystem.
Florida was the first state to mandate retention ponds. Developers have been required to incorporate ponds into their site plans since 1982, and there are nearly 11,000 of them in the Indian River County watershed.
When they work as planned, Florida’s retention ponds and associated grading reduce “the average annual post-development stormwater pollution by 80 percent,” according to Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
But the system can break down during the heavy local and hyper-local rainstorms Florida is known for. Torrential rain over a subdivision can cause its retention pond to fill and overflow, resulting in premature discharge of murky, polluted water that ends up in the lagoon.
The pilot program commissioners are backing, which is called Runoff to Resilience, is meant to solve that problem by using hyperlocal weather data and machine learning to trigger pumps to shunt water from one retention pond to another so there is no unplanned outflow. This is possible because many of the county’s thousands of ponds are connected, either by pipes or hydrologically, by ditches, streams, lakes or other natural watercourses.
The Nature Conservancy plans to install Continuous Monitoring and Adaptive Controls (CMAC) in each retention pond in the pilot area. The CMACs use advancements in hyper-local weather forecasting to automatically read and control water levels in the ponds based on rainfall information with the intention of keeping stormwater contained as long as necessary to remove harmful pollution, according to Byrne.
Scientists started by creating detailed hydrological maps of all the retention ponds across the Indian River Lagoon watershed. “That helped us identify micro-watersheds – groups of ponds together in one watershed that are interconnected with each other, before the water flows out of the watershed,” Byrne said.
The three private developments in Indian River County chosen for the pilot program make up such a “micro-watershed.” They have ponds that are all interconnected and all empty into one central canal, which leads to the lagoon. The names of the communities haven’t been made public because negotiations are ongoing, according to Byrne.
The CMACs in the ponds will “talk” to each other and learn from each other using artificial intelligence software, Byrne said. That is known as “machine learning.”
“We asked ourselves, ‘Can we look at all these retention systems together as a network?’” Byrne said. Depending on the success of the pilot program, the concept could be scaled up and retrofitted to any of the state’s tens of thousands of stormwater ponds, he added.
“We’ve had really great conversations with legislators,” he said. “The Indian River County Department of Natural Resources, St. Johns River Water Management District and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program have also been great partners.”
Scientists and planners say Runoff to Resilience has the potential to change the way private developers and municipalities treat stormwater runoff, creating better and cheaper stormwater retention systems in the future, protecting the Indian River Lagoon and other fragile Florida waterways.
