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- Info
Integrated stormwater management
| Author: |
Field, Richard; O'Shea, Marie L.; Chin, Kee Kean, eds. |
| Date: |
1993 |
| Periodical: |
Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers |
| Abstract: |
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began its research work in urban storm-generated pollution control and stormwater management in 1965, the field was in its infancy. It is gratifying to see this field growing and gaining the international recognition it deserves. Abatement or prevention of pollution from storm-generated flow is one of the most challenging areas in the environmental engineering field. The facts of life - from an engineering standpoint - are difficult to face in terms of design and cost. Operational problems can be just as foreboding. The full impacts of "marginal" pollution, particularly that caused by uncontrolled overflows, must be recognized now and planning initiated to improve sewage system efficiencies and bring all wastewater flows under control. Municipal programs with this objective cannot begin too soon because corrective action is time-consuming. Efforts devoted to improved sewerage systems will pay significant dividends in complete control of metropolitan wastewater problems and pollution abatement. Research and development are making available important answers on the most efficient and least costly methods needed to restore and maintain water resources for maximum usefulness to man. It is clear that abatement requirements for storm-flow pollution are forthcoming. Already, federal and local governments have promulgated wet-weather flow treatment and control standards. Now developed and developing regions can take a crucial opportunity and assess what has transpired around the globe, and determine their own best water management strategy. An optimal approach to integrated stormwater management is a total watershed or basin-wide analyses including a macro- or large-basin-scale evaluation interfaced with a descretized micro- or small-catchment-scale evaluation involving the integration of: (1) all catchments or drainage areas, tributaries, surrounding water bodies, and groundwater; (2) all pollutant source areas, land uses, and flows, i.e., combined-sewer drainage areas, separate-storm drainage areas, including their dry-weather discharges containing unauthorized or inappropriate cross-connections, existing water pollution control plant effluents, industrial-wastewater discharges; discharges from other land uses, and air pollution fall out; and (3) added storm-flow sludge and residual solids handling and disposal. Flood and erosion control along with reuse and reclamation technology must also be integrated with pollution control, so that the retention and drainage facilities required for flood and erosion control can be simultaneously designed or retrofitted for pollution control and stormwater reclamation. In conclusion, knowledge of interconnecting basin wide waters and pollutant loads affecting the receiving-water body and the subsurface and groundwater will result in knowing how to get the optimum water resource and pollution abatement and a much more expedient and cost effective water management programs.
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