Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2010CT212B

Baseline Study of Nutrient Loadings to Lake Kenosia

Institute: Connecticut
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-01-31
Total Federal Funds: $11,415 Total Non-Federal Funds: $34,142

Principal Investigators: Theodora Pinou

Project Summary: Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) is collaborating with the City of Danbury, Connecticut in a project that would create a stormwater treatment train for discharges to Lake Kenosia in western Connecticut. Lake Kenosia has been identified as an impaired water body and previous research has identified the location of the subwatershed that contributes the largest discharges of pollutants. The City has applied for funding for the future extension of this study from EPAs Section 319 grant program and is also seeking funding from other sources to focus on this sub-watershed. The collaboration with WCSU would delegate the performance monitoring of this stormwater treatment train by graduate students of the Biology Department to evalaute the pollutant reduction at each stage of the the treatment train. In the broader perspective of this project, The City of Danbury, Connecticuts long term innovative water quality initiative for Lake Kenosia will serve to demonstrate the following technological objectives: 1. Conduct a baseline water quality analysis of the runoff that discharges to the lake untreated. 2. Design a staged and expandable series of water treatment structures that will capture, divert and treat storm,water that would otherwise enter into an impaired water body, untreated. 3. Construct the first stages of water diversion and treatment system for this retrofitted drainage. 4. As the stormwater treatment system is installed, conduct an environmental performance monitoring of raw runoff (upstream) and treated runoff (downstream) of the treatment train. Based upon the stormwater monitoring, determine the loading reduction from these treatment structures and the degree to which this treatment addresses the EPA assigned Total Daily Maximum Load (TMDL) for the Lake. 5. Provide collaboration with students in western Connecticut schools at varying grade levels (middle school to college) by providing access to teachers to the treatment structures and sampling ports, along with opportunities for simple water testing for any grade level. 6. Develop a model for water quality treatment from a designed stormwater treatment structure that can be used to evaluate mitigation measures for future development projects that add impervious surface to the watershed. A fundamental step in this project is to evaluate baseline discharges of stormwater from the most polluted watershed sub-basin without any level of stormwater treatment, as identified in step 1 above, For the purpose of this proposal objective # 1, above, is the basis of this prospective application to CIWR. Funding is sought to provide WCSU with sampling equipment and to retain two graduate students to conduct a 6 month evaluation of the existing load of nitrogen , phosphorous and other indicator pollutants into the Lake without any level of storm treatment. The project can be initiated immediately, when funds are released and would be under the supervision of the Biology Department of WCSU (Dr. Theodora Pinou) with collaboration with the City of Danburys Water Resource consultant to the Lake Kenosia Commission (Jack Kozuchowski). Graduate students would be selected, trained in the sampling technique and would be responsible for collecting the stormwater that is collected from the storm events in a 6 month period, submitting the samples to a licensed laboratory and organizing the data for interpretation. Dr. Pinou and Mr. Kozuchowski would interpret the results and prepare a report to IWR that documents the baseline discharge from this subwatershed to the Lake. This report of baseline pollutant discharges would then be used as a design template for the creation of the stormwater treatment train that will be funded by other sources to bring the lake into conformance with the Total Daily Maximum Load (TMDL) that has been assigned for the lake by EPA. The magnitude of further reductions that may be needed can be determined from this pilot study and will be used as a springboard to the next stages of this long term project.