North Texas Stormwater Team Expands With Four Experienced Engineers

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Krista Melnar

Stormwater Engineer

The Stormwater group has added four experienced engineers in North Texas.

They are Holly Ahumada in Fort Worth, Chris Johnson in Denton, and Mark Scheurer and Dawit Zeweldi in Dallas.

All are registered professional engineers and certified floodplain managers and offer a diverse skillset to help address complex flood control and drainage challenges for clients locally, regionally and nationally. Their broad-ranging backgrounds include floodplain mapping, channel design and work with municipalities and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

Holly specializes in advanced 2-D modeling for large-scale water resources projects. Her experience includes preparing in-depth hydrologic and hydraulic analysis and working on multiple watershed studies in Texas and Louisiana. She has hands-on experience using ArcGIS, ICPR3, ICPR4, InfoWorks SD & ICM, Geo-RAS, HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling programs.

In 2018, Holly was recognized as the Texas Society of Professional Engineers – Fort Worth Young Engineer of the Year. She received her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Texas A&M University.

Chris brings more than 33 years of experience in water resources program management, quality oversight and business administration. He has diverse experience in both public and private sectors and most recently was an engineering manager for the City of Fort Worth. He has overseen projects for FEMA, the USACE, TxDOT, municipalities across the state and the San Antonio River Authority.

Chris received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Texas A&M University.

Mark is an established project manager with more than 10 years of experience in water resources engineering. Mark has handled a broad range of work for municipal clients and has experience overseeing hydrologic and hydraulic analysis and stormwater infrastructure design and has expertise in channel design and large-scale land development projects involving residential, commercial and industrial components.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Texas Tech University. He is registered as a Professional Engineer in Texas as well as Colorado.

Dawit brings more than 20 years of technical and managerial experience in water resources planning, design and implementation projects. He has international experience and has worked on hydraulic and hydrologic modeling projects across the United States and Texas. His experience includes multiple flood analysis projects for FEMA and work for TxDOT and USACE.  Dawit is proficient with flood analysis and mapping software, including HEC-RAS and the 2-D Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA) model developed by the USACE, a FEMA-approved tool that can be applied to simulate complex watersheds and subsurface water flow interactions.

He received his doctorate and master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Connecticut and his bachelor’s in irrigation engineering from Arba Minch Water Technology Institute in Ethiopia.

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Krista Melnar, PE, CFM, PMP, is the Stormwater Practice Leader in Austin.