Sara and Gustavo,

Thank you Sara for sending your bio to us. It was great to get to know you a little more! We are excited to be working with a student with so much experience, as well as experience in this program. We are excited to learn more about each of the members in the group.

As for the project, we have read your descriptions. Thank you for doing that work. As we discussed the descriptions, we felt that some of the important questions which we should answer are:

· What storm events will cause each town to flood?

· How would culvert failure affect lower-lying areas? (Tierra Blanca)

· How would highway fill failure affect lower-lying areas?

· What events would cause highway overtopping?

· Perhaps a culvert/bridge design for highway?

Again, these are some of the questions which we think would be good to answer in the study. We should also remind you that our lack of Spanish literacy could have resulted in our misunderstanding your descriptions. Are these questions similar to the questions which your team has identified? Please let us know if we are on the right track or if we did not fully understand the descriptions you sent us.

Some things we came up with that might help us to better understand each situation:

· Aerial image showing

o General direction of flow (both watersheds)

o Highway that act as a dam (Los Pinos)

o Highway that diverts water (Tierra Blanca)

o Location of culvert (Tierra Blanca)

· Descriptive information of culvert in Tierra Blanca

o What typically blocks the culvert?

o Does the blockage generally occur over a long time, or in larger flood events?

o Is it cleared quickly?

Regardless of whether our understanding of the project is correct, we will need to start collecting various data. Could you help us obtain the following data:

· Soil type maps

· Land use maps

· Digital Elevation Models

· Precipitation data to create IDF curves

Those are the questions and comments that we have at this time. We look forward to you letting us know if we correctly understand the project and what questions you feel are important to answer. Again, you know these areas, and have a much better idea of what our time will be best spent on. Please let us know how we can help!

Thanks again,

Brett, Clark and Joe