The United States Geological Survey Water Resources Research Act Program: Grant Details for Project 2010MI165B

Details for Project ID 2010MI165B

Runoff Reduction Credits for Low Impact Development Facilities

Institute: Michigan
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $15,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $37,972

Principal Investigators: Amirpouyan Nejadhashemi

Project Summary: Problem
Environmental and social changes in the urban environment are the result of rapid growth of this sector. Urban best management practices (BMPs) are well known techniques that have been introduced to manage stormwater and control pollution from developed areas through natural processes. However, selection of effective BMPs is one of the key challenges faced when trying to protect water quality.

Assessing BMP performance is commonly done using percent removal of the pollutant leaving the BMP (percent difference between the inflow and outflow concentrations). This approach is simple but has many shortcomings. For example, the ability of a BMP to reduce overall volume of runoff in addition to pollutant concentration is not accounted for in the percent removal method.

Methods
After performing a comprehensive literature review on runoff reduction performance of various urban BMPs, we plan to develop a user-friendly assessment tool (computer software). This tool will aid designers and engineers in identifying the best possible management practices considering both runoff and pollutant load reduction. Three modules are included in the tool: 1) BMP Runoff Reduction Performance Module; 2) BMP Influent/Effluent Quality Module; 3) Total Pollution Load Mitigation Module.

Objectives
The following objectives will be completed to address the project goal:
1. Synthesize current literature and databases related to the runoff prediction capabilities for various urban BMPs.
2. Develop a user-friendly assessment tool to estimate BMP effectiveness on runoff reduction capacity, performance under different influent qualities, and total pollutant load mitigation based on site-specific factors.