Jensen Infiltration Reservoir Stores 7 Million Gallons of Stormwater

A champion of civic and social progress during the 1940s and 1950s, longtime Los Angeles County Supervisor John Anson Ford would be pleased a community park named after him is now a source of cleaner water for everyone.

Underneath the 12.5 acre John Anson Ford Park in Bell Gardens, California, is a 21.5 acre feet infiltration cistern engineered to capture stormwater runoff and infiltrate to promote groundwater recharge. Pretreament systems remove trash, debris, heavy metals, and total suspended solids to ensure clean stormwater infiltrates into the ground below the park.

To meet Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) requirements mandated by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, Bell Gardens joined six other municipalities to achieve water quality objectives for the Rio Hondo Watershed. The watershed drains via an upstream storm drain system into the Rio Hondo, a tributary to the Los Angeles River that flows into the Pacific Ocean near Long Beach.

Of the six best management practice projects identified to address the MS4 requirements, the John Anson Ford Park Infiltration Cistern Project to Capture Urban Runoff was the most ambitious. It meant constructing a diversion structure and subsurface infiltration basin below the park to capture and recharge dry weather and storm runoff from a catchment area of 2,295 acres. The cistern design includes a filtration system that will remove trash and debris from the stormwater flow. Overall this project will improve local water supply by increasing the amount of groundwater in storage in the local basin.

Jensen Precast designed, engineered, and manufactured the three-phase project, which featured a 131’W x 20’H x 447’L Jensen Infiltration Reservoir and dual hydrodynamic Jensen Deflective Separators inside 12′ diameter precast concrete structures. The cistern will hold more than 7 million gallons of stormwater below the park, which includes baseball and soccer fields, basketball courts, playgrounds, a lake, and an amphitheatre.

“We certainly had our work cut out for us in taking on a project of this size and scope,” says Jay DeVries, Jensen Precast Southern California Sales Representative. “Our facility in Fontana, California, produced hundreds of monolithic box culvert pieces for the project. We were averaging around 8 to 10 pieces per day. It’s the biggest infiltration cistern we’ve built so far. Everyone stayed incredibly focused on delivering the goods to get it done. The biggest challenge was the design itself. Double stacking the culvert and then adding backfill over the structure is a significant load. Our engineering team did a great job for this customer.”

The Jensen Deflective Separator filters out trash and debris from diverted runoff as a California State Water Resources Control Board Full Capture System Device for Trash Control Treatment. It meets MS4 requirements from Los Angeles Regional Water Control Board for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and completes the City of Bell Gardens requirement to achieve water quality objectives for the Rio Hondo Watershed. Visitors to John Anson Ford Park will now view a newly remodeled landscape with additional features for families.

“Engineering design is always about balancing numerous constraints,” says Arshad Vali, Director of Engineering Projects for Jensen Precast. “For the John Anson Ford Park Project, the trick was storing an immense volume of water with a very small footprint. The solution was to go deep and stack the components on top of one another. Using finite element analysis and a variety of other tools, we were able to design an efficient structure to meet the customer’s needs. We were also able to manufacture them efficiently and meet the customer’s timeframe.”

Jensen Precast designs, engineers, and manufactures stormwater structures to capture and recharge dry weather and storm runoff. Get a quote for your project now.

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