Relating Stormwater Treatment Device Design Criteria to Effluent Quality: An In-Depth Statistical Analysis of the BMP Database

Many challenges are associated with choosing the most effective stormwater management device or treatment train for contaminant removal at a particular site, including determining the appropriate treatment technology and sizing the device. Current guidance documents provide estimated percent removals for a select group of pollutants (usually nutrients and total suspended solids [TSS]) and a set of design criteria, usually based on the size of either the drainage area or the impervious area. The objective of this study is to determine the design criteria that will improve the prediction of removal performance and develop a more effective way to design appropriate treatment technologies to eliminate the problematic contaminants in runoff water at a specific site. This project, in its earliest stages, has focused initially on determining whether relationships exist between inflow and outflow concentrations for three devices: bioretention basins, infiltration trenches, and retention ponds.