Abstract
Evaluating the impact of urban development on natural ecosystem processes has become an increasingly complex task for planners, environmental scientists, and engineers. As the built environment continues to grow, unregulated nonpoint pollutants from increased human activity and large-scale development severely stress urban streams and lakes resulting in their currently impaired or degraded state. In response, integrated water quality management programs have been adopted to address these unregulated nonpoint pollutants by utilizing best management practices (BMPs) that treat runoff as close to the source as possible. Knowing where to install effective BMPs is no trivial task, considering budget constraints and the spatially extensive nature of nonpoint stormwater runoff. Accordingly, this paper presents an initial, straightforward and cost-effective methodology to identify critical nonpoint pollutant source watersheds through correlation of water quality with land use. Through an illustrative application to metropolitan Denver, Colorado, it is shown how this method can be used to aid stormwater professionals to evaluate and specify retrofit locations in need of water quality treatment features reduce, capture and treat stormwater runoff prior to entering receiving waters.
Highlights
Stormwater has long been regarded as a major factor in flooding of urban areas, only since the 1980s have planners, environmental scientists, and engineers recognized the additional role that stormwater plays in water quality impairment of urban watersheds and natural ecosystems [1]
Since the creation of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (U.S EPA) has continued to develop and establish new regulations and remediation practices to address discharges of pollutants into streams and rivers, which have led designers to focus on pollutants located in and sourced by urban stormwater runoff [2,3]
Urban populations have grown significantly since of creation of the Clean Water Act, and stormwater pollutants have become the primary cause of impairment for urban surface waters [4,5,6]
Summary
Stormwater has long been regarded as a major factor in flooding of urban areas, only since the 1980s have planners, environmental scientists, and engineers recognized the additional role that stormwater plays in water quality impairment of urban watersheds and natural ecosystems [1]. Urban populations have grown significantly since of creation of the Clean Water Act, and stormwater pollutants have become the primary cause of impairment for urban surface waters [4,5,6]. In response to these impairments, watershed management practices have become a critical objective for quality improvement of streams and lakes [7,8].
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