Abstract
Green infrastructure is an increasingly popular approach to mitigate widespread degradation of urban waters from stormwater pollution. However, many stormwater best management practices (BMPs) have inconsistent water quality performance and are limited to on-site, land-based deployments. To address basin-wide pollutant loads still reaching urban streams, hyporheic zone engineering has been proposed as an in-stream treatment strategy. Recognizing that regulator and practitioner perspectives are essential for innovation in the water sector, we interviewed U.S. water management professionals about the perceived risks, opportunities, and knowledge gaps related to in-stream stormwater treatment. We used engineered hyporheic zones as a case study to understand interviewee perspectives on an emerging class of in-stream treatment technologies. Interviews revealed that many considerations for in-stream stormwater treatment are common to land-based BMPs, but in-stream BMPs have additional unique design and siting requirements. Here, we synthesize practitioner goals, their recommendations on in-stream BMP design, and open research questions related to in-stream BMPs. Many interviewees suggested pairing engineered hyporheic zones with other BMPs in a treatment train to improve in-stream treatment, while simultaneously reducing risk and cost. We discuss how treatment trains and other strategies might also help overcome regulatory hurdles for innovative stormwater treatment.
Highlights
Urban nonpoint source pollution is the fastest-growing cause of surface water quality impairment in the U.S [1], and urban streams around the world face similar degradation [2]
To mitigate widespread impairments of urban streams and downstream habitats [1,11,12], many studies have called for a comprehensive management approach in which in-stream strategies are used to complement land-based stormwater best management practices (BMPs) [8,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
This study reports on our efforts to identify the potential opportunities and limitations of stormwater BMPs through interviews with stormwater regulators and practitioners
Summary
Urban nonpoint source pollution is the fastest-growing cause of surface water quality impairment in the U.S [1], and urban streams around the world face similar degradation [2]. Stormwater can still reach the urban stream corridor by draining from lands with insufficient BMP coverage or by passing untreated through undersized and/or unmaintained. In some locations, expanding BMP coverage may still be an insufficient strategy to address stream impairments. To mitigate widespread impairments of urban streams and downstream habitats [1,11,12], many studies have called for a comprehensive management approach in which in-stream strategies (e.g., stream restoration) are used to complement land-based stormwater BMPs [8,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
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