Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2012DC145B

Monitoring of UDC Van-Ness Campus Green Roof System to Evaluate Runoff Quantity Control Performance

Institute: District of Columbia
Year Established: 2012 Start Date: 2012-03-01 End Date: 2013-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $11,512 Total Non-Federal Funds: $5,296

Principal Investigators: Pradeep Behera, Arash Massoudieh

Abstract: Urban stormwater management has been a very critical issue for most of the cities in the United States. The older metropolitan cities face severe stormwater quantity problems (i.e., flooding, sewer back up, stream bank erosion) and water quality problems (i.e., combined sewer overflows [CSOs] and stormwater discharges, water pollution and receiving water quality problems) due to aging drainage infrastructure and high impervious areas and other factors. Cities pay substantially for the damages when CSOs and polluted stormwater runoff reach local receiving waters. Similar to many older cities in the nation, the sewer system in the District of Columbia is comprised of both combined and separate sewer systems. It has been recognized that these systems contribute significant pollution to the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and Rock Creek through Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and Storm Sewer discharges during wet-weather (i.e., rainfall and snowmelt) events [1-3]. These overflows and associated pollutant loads can adversely impact the quality of the receiving waters. Anacostia River was determined to be one of the most polluted water bodies in the nation mainly due to the combined stormwater and municipal wastewater discharged to it during peak runoff [4]. A cost effective and sustainable way to reduce the stormwater and to remove the pollutions associated with it is using best management practices such as retention and detention basins, rain barrels, green roof, bioretention ponds and constructed wetlands. However due to the high cost of land in dense urban areas such as the District of Columbia it is highly desirable to minimize the land occupied by these facilities by optimizing their performance. The goal of the proposed research is to develop a modeling framework to evaluate the performance of green roof system in controlling stormwater runoff volume, peak flow and time delay of the peak flow. The research will involves the installation of equipments to measure the runoff quantity parameters at the newly built green roof systems at the UDC campus. The measured data will be utilized to evaluate the performance of green roof system in controlling runoff. The outcomes of this seed grant research is to develop a larger proposal to Federal agencies such as EPA, USGS, and NSF for external funding for a large scale, integrated assessment of the impact of various green roof systems on the storm-water quantity and quality in the District of Columbia.