Parking Deck’s First Flush
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 15, Issue 2
Abstract
The goals of storm-water management have shifted from a flood control to a holistic and sustainable strategy, emphasizing the relationship between rainfall event size and pollutant loadings. The first flush concept is the first part of a rainfall event that contains the largest pollutant loading. Questions have been raised on the concept’s validity for storms across different land uses and pollutant types. The existence and magnitude of the first flush impacts sizing of best management practices used to meet pollutant reduction goals, assessment sampling methodologies, and state storm-water management strategies. Current concepts support the use of distributed control measures focused on smaller storms off impervious surfaces. Runoff from a small impervious parking area was sampled incrementally during multiple storm events to measure pollutant concentration with respect to storm depth. This sampling routine established the existence of a first flush for a single use paved parking area. Total suspended solids, nitrate, chloride, dissolved copper, and dissolved cadmium exhibited a first flush up to a rainfall depth of 25.4 mm; total dissolved solids, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, nitrite, phosphate, and dissolved chromium did not exhibit a first flush.
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Acknowledgments
The work completed as part of this study was funded in part by the Pennsylvania 319 Nonpoint Source Program. The writers thank Clay Emerson for his invaluable contributions to this work.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 15 • Issue 2 • February 2010
Pages: 123 - 128
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Jan 29, 2009
Accepted: Jul 15, 2009
Published online: Jul 23, 2009
Published in print: Feb 2010
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