Stormwater treatment: inlet devices and filtration

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is engaged in a three year cooperative agreement (CR No. 819573) with the Storm and Combined Sewer Pollution Control Program of the U.S. EPA to monitor the performance of three stormdrain inlet filters, an optimally designed catchbasin, and several filter fabrics and filtering media. Henderson & Breen Environmental Engineers of Forked River, New Jersey, are overseeing the field installations, sampling, and shipping of the samples to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) for analyses. This summary reviews these devices and presents the field verification that has been conducted to date to confirm their performance. The test facilities for the inlet devices are located in a residential area and at the township public works yard in Stafford, NJ. The filter fabrics and filtering media are being evaluated in the laboratory using stormwater runoff from a large parking area on the campus of UAB. The monitoring program began in January 1994 and will include about 12 inlet and effluent samples from these devices over several different storms. Complete organic and metallic toxicant analyses, in addition to conventional pollutants, are included in the analytical program.