Urban Runoff Pollutant Removal of Three Engineered Soils

Looks at pollutant removal for 3 common engineered soils.

Urbanization converts largely pervious landscapes into buildings, roads, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces that increase storm runoff volume and contaminant loads. Urban storm runoff causes property damage, adds pollutants to receiving water bodies, increases the cost of infrastructure maintenance, and reduces groundwater recharge because of reduced infiltration.
Engineered soils are a type of soil that integrates soil and stones to support runoff storage, increase infiltration, and promote deep rooting that reduces the heaving of sidewalks, curbs and gutters by tree roots. They are highly porous, and have been used to expand the soil volume for trees in small tree wells in plazas and parking lots. In this study, pollutant removal rates of contaminated storm runoff and runoff storage capacities were tested for three different types of engineered soils. Surface runoff was collected from parking lots and streets in different types of land uses for a variety of storm sizes and seasons. The laboratory test results indicated that 29.0% to 84.0% of the nutrients in the storm runoff were removed by these engineered soils. The heavy metal removal rate ranged from 75.0 to 92.0%. Pollutant removal rates were strongly related to the type and size of rainfall event, runoff pollutants concentration, as well as the pollutants constituents and engineered soil types. [Abstract]

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