Effectiveness of Design and Implementation Alternatives for Stormwater Control Measures Modeled at the Watershed Scale.

Abstract

To evaluate the effectiveness of dispersed stormwater control measures (SCMs), it is important to consider groundwater-surface water interactions and their consequences for stream hydrologic responses relevant to channel geomorphic stability and ecology. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of different SCM design scenarios and implementation alternatives on exceedance levels and volumes of streamflow at the watershed scale. For this purpose, a process-based block-connector model of Sligo Creek, an urban watershed (29 km²) in the suburbs of Washington, DC, was used to study the effects of SCM system design on the stream hydrograph. The watershed has 34% impervious area (IA), which was discretized into 14 similar-sized subwatersheds, each consisting of pervious and impervious surface areas. Each subwatershed was compartmentalized with the representative overland flow, unsaturated flow, groundwater blocks, and links to main channel segments. The model was calibrated and validated to existing conditions using a 3-year time series of observed flow data. Afterward, a predevelopment simulation was configured. Three SCM unit designs and IA diversions through the SCM retrofit system were simulated. The three unit design scenarios represented a simple pond with surface storage and overflow or SCMs that infiltrate with an engineered soil layer and with or without an underdrain pipe. Differences among the model simulations were evaluated using flow exceedance probability curves. The area of the SCM system was modeled as 5% of the IA retrofit. Three implementation levels, including 10%, 50%, and 90% of the IA diverted through SCMs, were considered for each SCM unit design. The results showed that at least a 50% retrofit of runoff from IA watershedwide would be needed to achieve similar predevelopment base flows and peak flows. Intermediate flows could not be matched but were closest for the infiltration with the underdrain pipe design scenario. It was also found that concentrating the SCMs in the lower portion of the watershed resulted in more effectively achieving the predeveloped exceedance curves than uniform SCM implementation. The results are relevant to planning-level decisions that depend on effectiveness predictions of different SCM unit designs and implementation alternatives in developed watersheds.