Design velocity of the intercoastal waterway

[beej67]

A colleague called me up recently with a strange question. He has an industrial site on the ICW, and has to put together a SWPPP for it that includes an estimate of how fast an oil spill will travel down the intercoastal waterway, so he needs an estimate of flow velocity within the ICW itself.

I've never done engineering on the ICW, but I have motored down it in a boat, and the places I've been had basically zero velocity. Is there an engineering guideline for ICW designs that dictates a maximum flow velocity in the ditch?

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

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[jgailla]

Well, since nobody's responded, I'll take a guess.
The Intracoastal in my area (North Florida) is entirely tidal.
I would guess that for the vast majority of the time the velocity is between 0 and 1 feet per second.
You could try using 0.5 feet per second and see if that works with the reviewer, but I would think the spread of oil would be determined by local conditions such as wind and tide.