Assessing Pollutant Loads and Evaluation of Treatment Systems to Achieve Water Quality Goals for Land Development Projects

It is widely acknowledged that all types of land development have some type of impacts on the environment. Most of these impacts adversely affect our environment, such as those from non-point sources, such as storm water discharges. In the past 10–15 years, the adverse impacts on water quality from non-point source pollutants have become very significant. These pollutants have adversely affected our natural and in particular our aquatic environments. Most municipal land use agencies are unaware of the types of pollutants in non-point source runoff and the negative effects that they have on our environment. The commissions are also not aware how various storm water treatment systems remove pollutants associated with non-point source runoff. The preparation of a pollutant loading analysis is one tool that can be used to not only determine the amount of pollutants associated with development, but how effective the storm water treatment systems are at the removal of the pollutants.