Effectiveness of Best Management Practices for Stormwater Treatment as a Function of Runoff Volume
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142, Issue 11
Abstract
Best management practices (BMPs) such as bioretentions, dry and wet ponds, porous pavement, and many other methods are widely used to reduce the runoff volume and the concentration of sediments and nutrients in the runoff. Numerical models are used to develop and assess water quality management plans that, among others, include BMPs. Those models need to take into account the BMP effectiveness to remove pollutants, being a function of the volume of daily runoff, in order to estimate their performance under a range of different climate scenarios. Circumventing the lack of monitoring data, this study used the Environmental Protection Agency’s system for urban stormwater treatment and analysis integration model (SUSTAIN) to run 22 years (1984–2005) of runoff data from the Patuxent River (Maryland) through seven types of BMPs. It was found that BMP effectiveness decreases sooner, steeper, and deeper with increasing sizes of storm events than assumed in the Chesapeake Bay Phase 5 watershed model. At a minimum, the resulting performance curves should differentiate among BMPs.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was written during a summer associateship at the RAND Corporation and is part of a project for the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development. Jordan Fischbach and Edmundo Molina-Perez at the RAND Corporation advised the project. Gopal Bhatt, Gary Shenk, James Goodrich, Susan Julius, and Tom Johnson at EPA provided valuable help along the way. At the RAND Corporation, Rob Lempert, Abdul Tariq, and David Johnson contributed advice.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 11 • November 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 19, 2015
Accepted: Mar 23, 2016
Published online: Jul 5, 2016
Published in print: Nov 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Dec 5, 2016
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