A Canal Capacity Evaluation Program for the South Florida Water Management District

The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) operates and maintains a regional water management system that consists of levees, reservoirs, and approximately 2,000 miles of canals along with their water control structures. Many of these canals and hydraulic structures were designed and constructed over 50 years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Project. Over time, the system has been deteriorating and, consequently, some canal reaches are unable to convey current design or regulatory discharges with an acceptable amount of freeboard. In some cases, a canal reach may not even be able to convey its original design discharges due to siltation or other conveyance restrictions. In order to understand the current state of the C&SF canals in regard to both original and current design requirements, the SFWMD has embarked on a new canal conveyance evaluation program (CCEP) in which canal capacities will be evaluated in regard to their original design flows, current design, or regulatory requirements, design water surface profiles, and available freeboard. For each C&SF canal, the intent of the CCEP is to use hydraulic models to assess the current conveyance capacity of the canal, evaluate the potential loss of its conveyance capacity relative to its design criteria, and in some cases develop cost-effective capacity improvement strategies. An application of the CCEP to the C-1W canal in southern Miami-Dade County, Florida, is presented as a case study.