AEG 2021 ANNUAL MEETING
AEG Outstanding Environmental & Engineering Geologic Project Award
Mission Reach of the San Antonio River Walk Project Team: The San Antonio River Authority Bexar County, City of San Antonio, USACE, Jacobs, and Zachry Construction Corporation The Mission Reach of the San Antonio Riverwalk restored native habitats and added recreational amenities while maintaining the flood carrying capacity of the channel.
National and International Significance of the Project The San Antonio River Walk is world renowned for being lined with hotels, restaurants, and retail which plays host to large river parades that bring over 100,000 people to the river as well as small intimate gatherings like private weddings on Marriage Island. Prior to the pandemic, a recent economic impact study conservatively concluded that 11.5 million people visit the San Antonio River Walk annually, and those visitors stimulate an overall annual economic impact of $3.1 billion and support over 30,000 jobs. The River Walk began in the 1930s, and in 1998, Bexar County, the City of San Antonio, and the San Antonio River Authority (River Authority) launched the San Antonio River 34
Improvements Project (SARIP) to expand on the success of the original river park. The SARIP included the innovative Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration and Recreation Project (Mission Reach). In June 2008, construction began on the $271.4 million Mission Reach portion of the SARIP. The Mission Reach project is one of the largest urban ecosystem restoration projects in the nation and the first of its kind to be justified through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) ecosystem restoration cost-benefit process. The project was completed in October 2013. As the Mission Reach project restores the natural ecosystem of the river and provides new recreational benefits, it also reconnects the river to the historic Spanish Missions that relied on it hundreds of years ago. The San Antonio Missions were recognized in 2015 as a UNESCO World Heritage site,
AEG 64th Annual Meeting Program with Abstracts
September 2021
