PENC Webinar: Fayetteville NC Watershed Program 

Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Location: MS Teams Webinar - a link will be provided the day prior to the program
Cost: PENC Members: Free | Non-Members: $20
PDH: 1

Fayetteville NC Watershed Program – Where we’ve been and where we’re going!

The combination of pluvial and fluvial flooding in the rapidly developing city of Fayetteville creates many challenges in flood mitigation, during extreme events as well as smaller more frequent rainfall events.  In 2019 city leaders embarked on an ambitious city-wide Watershed Master Plan program to better understand the magnitude and severity of stormwater flooding across the city and proactively develop mitigation projects.  City leaders understood that a comprehensive evaluation would support resiliency by providing a pool of prioritized projects for both short- and long-term implementation and leverage resources.  This future-forward thinking has proven invaluable, because the city is now equipped with better information about project needs in critical areas, and the detailed studies have been crucial in securing grants. These grant awards essentially offset program costs to date.

The program foundation was established over four years and included a rebuild of the stormwater geodatabase, a city-wide high priority area stormwater asset field survey, guidance for modeling and data visualization, parallel modeling efforts, and methods for prioritizing projects.  Master plans for eight of the 15 watersheds have been completed with twenty flood mitigation projects under various phases of design or construction.  Other aspects of this comprehensive program are also being developed, including the installation of stream and precipitation gages, plans for future model updates, strategies for updating the GDB, comprehensive Strategic Planning, stormwater asset survey for remainder of city, early flood warning system, and more.

Success of the program is due to the unwavering support by city leaders and the community, continuous collaboration among city and consultant team members and city leaders, and the courage to consider unique opportunities at a scale beyond the typical flood mitigation projects of the past.

Speaker: Alicia Lanier, Stormwater Project Manager – Special Projects
City of Fayetteville

Biography: Alicia Lanier received her undergrad and graduate degrees from NCSU, as a first-generation university student. She is a Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society member, and holds PE licenses in NC, CA, and OR. Alicia’s career took her from NCSU Extension Specialist (with the Water Quality Group) to consulting for a large water resources firm in CA and OR (CH2M HiLL now Jacobs), to consulting under her own shingle in Portland Oregon, and Miami Florida for many years.  Alicia found her way back to Clarkton, NC, in 2019, where she grew up driving a tractor at 6-years old on their small share-cropper’s tobacco farm.  She has served for the last 5 years as the Program Manager for the City of Fayetteville Watershed Master Plan Program. Alicia has been instrumental in bringing adaptive project management concepts to the City’s Watershed Master Plan program.  This program was awarded the James Lee Witt Local Award for Excellence in Floodplain Management in 2024. The program has also been ingested into the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit as well as the state of NC Resilience Exchange.  The program has earned the trust of the council and community by honoring commitments, being transparent, and  providing continuous communication.