Trip # 1. San Pedro Creek Culture Park

This walking tour of San Pedro Creek Culture Park will give conference attendees a field-based look at how a historic urban creek has been transformed into a high-performing public infrastructure corridor in downtown San Antonio. This tour is for attendees interested in stormwater management, flood control, low impact development, and stream restoration, the tour will highlight the park’s integrated approach to containing the 100-year floodplain within the creek banks through channel improvements, flood control tunnel, and bridge replacements, while also improving water quality through bioswales, aquatic plantings, floatables removal, and restored habitat. Participants will walk the accessible paseos along the original creek alignment and examine how engineering, landscape architecture, public art, interpretive signage, and cultural preservation work together to create a linear park that functions as flood control infrastructure, an ecosystem restoration project, and a civic destination rooted in the birthplace of San Antonio.

Cost: $50.00

Trip # 2. Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy

This walking tour of Phil Hardberger Park will provide conference attendees with an on-the-ground look at how a 330-acre urban park can combine ecological connectivity, stormwater management, and public access within a rapidly developed part of San Antonio. The tour will emphasize the Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge, the nation’s first mixed-use wildlife crossing, which reconnects the two sides of the park across Wurzbach Parkway while using native landscaping, berms, wildlife blinds, water features, and the elevated Skywalk to separate and support both pedestrian and wildlife movement. For planners and designers focused on low impact development and flood-resilient design, the park also offers a strong demonstration of distributed green infrastructure, including bioswales that collect and filter stormwater, permeable parking areas and decomposed-granite trails that reduce runoff, rainwater harvesting systems and cisterns for irrigation, native plantings that reduce potable water demand, and wetland restoration areas designed to collect, hold, and infiltrate stormwater while improving habitat function.

Cost: $50.00

Trip # 3. Confluence Park Walking Tour

This walking tour of Confluence Park will give conference attendees a close look at how environmental education, architecture, and green stormwater infrastructure can be integrated into a riverfront park that functions as both a public space and a teaching tool for watershed dynamics. This tour is for attendees interested in stormwater management, flood control, low impact development, and stream restoration, the tour will include three technical stations: Watershed Health, Green Stormwater Infrastructure, and a Flora & Fauna Walk throughout the park and along the Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration Project. Participants will examine how the park’s pavilion geometry, landform grading, and site-wide water catchment system harvest rainwater; how an underground cistern, alluvial soils, permeable pathways, permeable parking, native South Texas ecotype plantings, and runoff-slowing landscape features treat stormwater as a resource before it reaches the San Antonio River; and how the Mission Reach has transformed an eight-mile stretch of river into a restored riparian woodland ecosystem with reintroduced native plants, enhanced aquatic habitat, and stronger connections to cultural and recreational river corridors.

Cost: $50

 Trip # 4. Bike Tour of the Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration Project and the San Antonio Missions Sites

This guided electric-bike tour will depart from Confluence Park and follow the San Antonio River Walk through the Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration Project, giving conference attendees a mobile field review of one of the region’s most visible urban river restoration and recreation corridors. This tour is for attendees interested in stormwater management, flood control, low impact development, and stream restoration, the tour will explore how the eight-mile Mission Reach transformed a formerly channelized river segment into a restored riparian corridor with hike-and-bike trails, native grasses and wildflowers, improved water quality, enhanced aquatic habitat, and ongoing vegetation management practices that support both ecosystem function and flood conveyance. Stops will include historic acequias and National Park Service mission sites, where participants can connect contemporary watershed restoration practices with the gravity-fed irrigation systems, diversion structures, cultural landscapes, and river-dependent settlement patterns that shaped San Antonio’s missions. The tour will use electric bikes from Bcycle; helmets will be provided, and signed waivers will be required before participation.

Cost: $50.00