Spatial and Temporal Variation in Local Stormwater Infrastructure Use and Stormwater Management Paradigms over the 20th Century

Rebecca Hale

doi:10.3390/w8070310

Abstract

Stormwater management has significant consequences for urban hydrology, water quality, and flood risk, and has changed substantially over history, but it is unknown how these paradigm shifts play out at the local scale and whether local changes in stormwater infrastructure use follow similar trajectories across cities. This research addressed: (1) How does current infrastructure use and past infrastructure transitions vary across three cities with similar biophysical and climatic contexts but different development histories? and (2) How did stormwater and flood management paradigms change from early urbanization to current day in a single city? The use of storm sewers, detention basins, and canals for stormwater management was quantified for three cities in Utah, USA, over the 20th century. Stormwater management paradigms were quantified using media content analysis of newspaper articles from historic and recent periods in Salt Lake City. Results suggest that stormwater infrastructure development is decoupled from imperviousness across cities, and that newer and smaller cities follow different trajectories of stormwater management over time. This research highlights that there is no single model of urban hydrology and that heterogeneity in urban water management over time and space reflects shifting priorities and social learning.

Highlights

Urbanization has tremendous consequences for hydrological processes through the alteration of land cover [1], burial of streams [2], creation and destruction of lakes [3], re-plumbing of watersheds with stormwater infrastructure [4,5], and restoration and redesign of streams [6]
Studies that focus only on imperviousness are missing a critical component of urban hydrology, one that is not necessarily correlated with development
Imperviousness is well correlated with hydrologic alteration in some studies [1,35,36,37], it may not be an effective predictor of urban hydrology across a wider range of urban contexts

Summary

Introduction

Urbanization has tremendous consequences for hydrological processes through the alteration of land cover [1], burial of streams [2], creation and destruction of lakes [3], re-plumbing of watersheds with stormwater infrastructure [4,5], and restoration and redesign of streams [6]. Stormwater infrastructure can exacerbate or mitigate the effects of urbanization on the transport of water, nutrients, and other pollutants from urban watersheds [5,6,7,8,9,10]. Social consequences of stormwater infrastructure design include risk of exposure to flooding and water pollution [11], as well as benefits derived from multiuse infrastructure [12]. Information on stormwater infrastructure is important for understanding variation in the effects of urbanization on hydrological patterns across cities [13]. Knowledge about the locations, designs, and timing of stormwater infrastructure use is necessary to understand variation in the current and past patterns of urban hydrology, water quality, and flood risk across cities, as well as the consequences of climate change for those outcomes [11,14,15]. Much of the urban stream and urban hydrology literature assumes that all urban systems follow the same trajectory of change from no infrastructure, to centralized storm sewer systems, to decentralized systems and the use of green infrastructure [12,17,18,20,21], leading to relatively homogenous current conditions across cities [3,22]

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Conclusion