SPEAKERS:

Dave Hirschman, Hirschman Water & Environment, LLC
Bryan Seipp, Center for Watershed Protection

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Can we get more reductions from our stormwater BMPs? We all know that in the Chesapeake Bay stormwater BMPs that are built to the Bay state design specs are credited with removing nutrients and sediment based on the amount of runoff treated per impervious cover …but what if we can tweak the designs of BMPs to remove more of one pollutant or another?

This webcast will cover a recent literature review conducted by the Chesapeake Stormwater Network, the Center for Watershed Protection and Hirschman Water & Environment, LLC which looked at what enhancements can be done to improve the removal of nutrients by stormwater BMPs.

To understand the influence of PEDs, it should be understood that bioretention – and several other stormwater BMPs – have done an admirable job of removing particulate forms of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), and steady improvement has been made in pollutant removal performance. However, dissolved forms of both P and N have lagged behind in terms of effective removal mechanisms. This has been a concern, since dissolved nutrients can constitute a sizable fraction of total urban loads, and the dissolved forms may be more bioavailable in downstream receiving waters than the particulate-bound forms left behind in the BMPs. A strong focus of more recent research has been on how to effectively reduce the fuller spectrum of nutrients, including both particulate and dissolved forms.