Are Best-Management-Practice Criteria Really Environmentally Friendly?
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 127, Issue 3
Abstract
In the 1990's, a number of best management practices (BMPs) manuals have been developed that address the control of urban runoff to protect receiving water quality. More recently, several papers have investigated the effectiveness of these BMPs in protecting small urban watercourses, and have concluded that they do not. Investigations of both design practices and effectiveness reveals that there is a lot of ignorance in the scientific and engineering community about what constitutes a properly designed BMP and what it really achieves, with respect to environmental protection. This paper discusses the state-of-practice in BMP design in the United States and points out its strengths and weaknesses with respect to real protection of the downstream receiving water environment. The paper recommends an approach to design criteria development that can be applied over a wide variety of climatologic, topologic, and geologic conditions to protect receiving waters systems.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
Booth, D. B. ( 1990). “Stream channel incision following drainage basin urbanization.” Water Resour. Bull., 26(3), 407–417.
2.
Heaney, J. P., Wright, L., and Sample, D. ( 1999). “Research needs in urban wet weather flows.” Water Envir. Res., 71(2), 241–250.
3.
Hollis, G. E. ( 1975). “The effect of urbanization on floods of different recurrence intervals.” Water Resour. Res., 11(3), 431–435.
4.
Joint Task Force of the Water Environment Federation and ASCE. ( 1998). “Urban runoff quality management.” ASCE Manual and Rep. on Engrg. Pract. No. 87, ASCE, Reston, Va.
5.
MacRae, C. R. ( 1991). “A procedure for design of storage facilities for instream erosion control in urban streams.” PhD dissertation, Dept. of Civ. Engrg., University of Ottawa, Canada.
6.
MacRae, C. R. ( 1993). An alternative design approach for the control of stream erosion potential in urbanizing watersheds.” Proc., 6th Int. Conf. on Urban Storm Drain.,
7.
MacRae, C. R. ( 1997). “Experience from morphological research on Canadian streams: Is the control of the two-year frequency runoff event the best basis for stream channel protection?” Effects of Watershed Devel. and Mgmt. of Aquatic Ecosys., L. A. Roesner, ed., ASCE, Reston, Va., 144–162.
8.
Maxted, J., and Shaver, E. ( 1997). “Use of retention basins to mitigate stormwater impacts on aquatic life.” Effects of Watershed Devel. and Mgmt. on Aquatic Ecosys., L. A. Roesner, ed., ASCE, Reston, Va., 494–512.
9.
McCuen, R. H., and Moglen, G. E. (1988). “Multicriterion stormwater management methods.”J. Water Resour. Plng. and Mgmt., ASCE, 114(4), 414–431.
10.
McCuen, R. H. ( 1989). Hydrologic analysis and design, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
11.
Roesner, L. A. et al. ( 1974). “A model for evaluating runoff-quantity and quality in metropolitan master planning.” Tech. Memo. No. 23, ASCE Urban Water Resources Research Program, ASCE, New York.
12.
Roesner, L. A. ( 1999). “The hydrology of urban runoff quality management.” Sustaining Urban Water Resour. in the 21st Century, ASCE, Reston, Va., 229–241.
13.
Schueler, T. R. ( 1987). Controlling urban runoff: A practical manual for planning and designing urban BMPs, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, Washington, D.C.
14.
Schueler, T. R. ( 1999). “Keynote speech in proceedings of the conference on diffuse pollution, Edinburgh, Scotland, August, 1998.” Water Sci. and Technol., 39(12),
15.
Storage, treatment, overflow, runoff model “STORM.” (1976). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hydrologic Engineering Center, Davis, Calif.
16.
Urbonas, B., and Stahre, P. ( 1993). Stormwater: Best management practices and detention for water quality, drainage, and CSO management, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
17.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). ( 1983). “USEPA, Results of the nationwide urban runoff program, final report.” NTIS No. PB84-185545, Washington, D.C.
18.
Wilcock, P. ( 1997). “Friction between science and practice: The case of river restoration.” EOS, Trans., 78(41), 454.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 127 • Issue 3 • June 2001
Pages: 150 - 154
History
Received: Nov 20, 2000
Published online: Jun 1, 2001
Published in print: Jun 2001
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.