Angelo State students propose $3M–$5M lagoon restoration and stormwater-reuse system at Civic League Park

Angelo State University civil-engineering students presented a conceptual restoration and stormwater-reuse design for Civic League Park’s lagoon that, if implemented, would aim to reduce flooding, improve water quality and supply irrigation water for park landscapes.

Project leads Taylor Hines, Griffin and Chadwick Williams described existing site conditions: the lagoon currently stores roughly 2.5 acre-feet of water, the watershed draining to the lagoon spans about 510 acres, and the 100-year 24-hour rainfall used for design is 7.97 inches. Students said modeling of that storm produced a peak inflow of about 595 cubic feet per second and a volume accumulation in the watershed of about 256 acre-feet—far exceeding the lagoon’s present capacity.

The team proposed a layered approach: install diversion infrastructure to route extreme flows to the river, place trash racks at inlet culverts to capture large debris, build forebays and a stormwater wetland to capture sediment and pollution, repair or replace the failed dam, and install a pumped system that would move treated stormwater to a roughly 30,000-gallon galvanized tank to supply drip irrigation for park landscapes. Students recommended buttonbush and other vegetation for the wetland and proposed aerated fountains in the lagoon to reduce algae and odor.

“Right now the lagoon can only store about four Olympic swimming pools; our watershed 100-year volume is roughly 457 Olympic pools,” one presenter said to illustrate the scale mismatch. Students gave a preliminary cost estimate of about $3 million and warned final design could add roughly $2 million.

Board members praised the presentation and moved to recommend the concept to the River Parks master-plan steering committee and to receive the students’ final capstone presentation on May 1. Staff and students will continue technical design work and provide cost updates ahead of any formal project approval or budgeting decision.