Awarding Certificate of Retirement

Staff Report & Agenda Item Details

Wayne Tschirhart – 19 years/Retirement Wayne joined the River Authority on June 25, 2007 as an Engineer in the Watershed Management Department. On February 24, 2017, he was promoted to his current position of Senior Technical Engineer in the Engineering Department.Throughout his tenure, his specialized knowledge of meteorology and hydrology has been a valuable resource to the organization.When Wayne started working for the River Authority, he initially supported the flood and floodplain modeling efforts, performing some FEMA reviews but primarily focused on flood decision support tools. Early efforts in flood alerting led to the first iteration of the predictive flood model using the FloodWorks software. He has since overseen the development and implementation of the second version of the predictive flood model, which is the one still in use today, and he has been active in the NextGen Flood Warning System program. Wayne also took on the dam safety program early in his career at the River Authority. When the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality published dam safety regulations in 2010, he began the work of bringing the River-Authority-maintained dams into compliance, sparking multiple rehabilitation projects and initiating in-house engineering inspections. He maintains current emergency action plans and hosts emergency response tabletop exercises. He has also partnered with watershed and parks operations, survey, real estate, and legal to monitor and protect the dams and their inundation areas against damaging activities. Perhaps his most visible role is that of agency weather man. Drawing on his training and experience from his pre-engineering career as a meteorologist, Wayne has produced rain outlook and update messages for the organization for the last several years. He has mentored a team of engineers, scientists, and operators to support the flood watch, allowing the River Authority to observe rain events around the clock and provide situational awareness to public works and emergency coordinators. Throughout the years, his mentorship across has helped build the skills across the department that allow us to continue the flood and dam safety work included in our core services. While we wish Wayne all the best in his retirement, his mentorship and expertise will be missed.