Integrated Hydrodynamic and Water Quality Modeling System to Support Nutrient Total Maximum Daily Load Development for Wissahickon Creek, Pennsylvania

Abstract

This paper presents a hydrodynamic and water quality modeling system for Wissahickon Creek, Pa. Past data show that high nutrient levels in Wissahickon Creek were linked to large diurnal fluctuations in oxygen concentration, which combining with the deoxygenation effect of carbonaceous biological oxygen demand CBOD causes violations of dissolved oxygen DO standards. To obtain quantitative knowledge about the cause of the DO impairment, an integrated modeling system was developed based on a linked environmental fluid dynamics code EFDC and water quality simulation program for eutrophication WASP/EUTRO5 modeling frame- work. The EFDC was used to simulate hydrodynamic and temperature in the stream, and the resulting flow information were incorporated into the WASP/EUTRO5 to simulate the fate and transport of nutrients, CBOD, algae, and DO. The standard WASP/EUTRO5 model was enhanced to include a periphyton dynamics module and a diurnal DO simulation module to better represent the prototype. The integrated modeling framework was applied to simulate the creek for a low flow period when monitoring data are available, and the results indicate that the model is a reasonable numerical representation of the prototype.