At Hemisfair’s new Civic Park, “nuisance water” has a better purpose than the term might imply.
Nuisance water is a phrase given to “unwanted” runoff that collects in a city’s urban areas. However, Civic Park will be giving nuisance water collected under the Henry B. González Convention Center a new purpose: supplying the park’s unique water features and irrigation system.
“This park is very much native and sustainable,” said Meredith Balzen, Hemisfair spokeswoman, as she led the way through the beautiful, modern park Thursday morning. “We wanted to make sure all the plants that were chosen and the trees that were chosen, and all of the water practices are really, really sustainable for the future.”
The new park’s greenest elements, including its nuisance water system, were designed by Seattle-based landscape architects GGN, and constructed by international construction firm Skanska. City and Hemisfair officials broke ground in early 2022 on the $27 million park project at the corner of South Alamo and East Market streets.
The first phase, turning a 5-acre empty lot in the northwestern portion of Hemisfair into a large public green space with a great lawn spanning over 51,000 square feet, is completed. Construction on another four acres for Phase 2 is set to get underway in October.
The park’s nuisance water system operates independently from the city’s water system. However, it is clean enough for visitors to splash in after going through a small but effective filtration system of its own.
The park has five rectangular “springs,” which are meant to be representative of the Texas Hill Country’s natural springs. Each spring is unique from the others and has multiple seeps that allow the cleaned-up nuisance water to flow over limestone into small wading pools visitors can splash in.
“They’re all designed differently, but they all take their designs from the springs that are located in the South Texas region between San Antonio and Austin,” Balzen said
The water is collected under the Convention Center by a sump pump, which takes nuisance water both from around the perimeter of the center’s basement and air conditioning condensation that would typically flow off into the city’s storm collection system.
The water is collected into a 40,000-gallon underground cistern that distributes the water to either be used for irrigation — watering the 9-acre park’s 200 trees, grass, and shrubs — or for the park’s eight water features.
The water flow averages about 28 gallons per minute, and after it is collected, it will be filtered to remove particles greater than 5 microns.
Water that comes from the system destined for the water features goes to a filtration room located under the park, where it will be brought up to near swimming pool quality through sand filters and the addition of chemicals and UV light.
“This is a fully automated control system,” Skanska superintendent Ty Johnson said from inside the small room, where the noise level was loud, with pipes, dials, and knobs all working at full steam.
Because the water does not come from the Edwards Aquifer, the park will not be required to restrict watering during drought conditions which are common throughout the city, Balzen said.
Balzen added the water reuse system for the park represents an opportunity to showcase water self-sufficiency on a new scale, which is a big deal in a water-stressed state like Texas.
