Effectiveness of Design and Implementation Alternatives for Stormwater Control Measures Modeled at the Watershed Scale
Publication: Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment
Volume 9, Issue 1
Abstract
To evaluate the effectiveness of dispersed stormwater control measures (SCMs), it is important to consider groundwater–surface water interactions and their consequences for stream hydrologic responses relevant to channel geomorphic stability and ecology. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of different SCM design scenarios and implementation alternatives on exceedance levels and volumes of streamflow at the watershed scale. For this purpose, a process-based block-connector model of Sligo Creek, an urban watershed () in the suburbs of Washington, DC, was used to study the effects of SCM system design on the stream hydrograph. The watershed has 34% impervious area (IA), which was discretized into 14 similar-sized subwatersheds, each consisting of pervious and impervious surface areas. Each subwatershed was compartmentalized with the representative overland flow, unsaturated flow, groundwater blocks, and links to main channel segments. The model was calibrated and validated to existing conditions using a 3-year time series of observed flow data. Afterward, a predevelopment simulation was configured. Three SCM unit designs and IA diversions through the SCM retrofit system were simulated. The three unit design scenarios represented a simple pond with surface storage and overflow or SCMs that infiltrate with an engineered soil layer and with or without an underdrain pipe. Differences among the model simulations were evaluated using flow exceedance probability curves. The area of the SCM system was modeled as 5% of the IA retrofit. Three implementation levels, including 10%, 50%, and 90% of the IA diverted through SCMs, were considered for each SCM unit design. The results showed that at least a 50% retrofit of runoff from IA watershedwide would be needed to achieve similar predevelopment base flows and peak flows. Intermediate flows could not be matched but were closest for the infiltration with the underdrain pipe design scenario. It was also found that concentrating the SCMs in the lower portion of the watershed resulted in more effectively achieving the predeveloped exceedance curves than uniform SCM implementation. The results are relevant to planning-level decisions that depend on effectiveness predictions of different SCM unit designs and implementation alternatives in developed watersheds.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code that support the findings of this study including precipitation, wind, solar radiation, relative humidity, and temperature data, the scripts that can be used to regenerate the scenarios automatically, and the observed data used for the calibration are available on HydroShare at this address: https://www.hydroshare.org/resource/38c611fe0e17495181eafe8cf4643216/. GIFMod is an open-source program and the code is available at https://github.com/ArashMassoudieh/GIFMod. Distribution versions are available on www.gifmod.com.
Acknowledgments
We thank the helpful comments provided by Dr. Heather Golden, Dr. Michelle Simon, and Dr. Michael Elovitz on earlier drafts of this paper. Agency Disclaimer: The research presented was not performed or funded by EPA and was not subject to EPA’s quality system requirements. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views or the policies of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
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Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment
Volume 9 • Issue 1 • February 2023
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Feb 17, 2022
Accepted: Sep 4, 2022
Published online: Nov 25, 2022
Published in print: Feb 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Apr 25, 2023
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