City of Fremont NPDES Stormwater Treatment Measures Evaluation

Abstract:

As of August 15, 2006, most new and redevelopment projects in the Bay Area that create or replace 10,000 square feet or more of impervious surfaces are required to consider site design strategies to maximize pervious surfaces within the development area and to incorporate stormwater treatment measures and source control measures into the project design.  Although many of the stormwater treatment measures advocated by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board) have been installed and in use on the East Coast, the Northwest, and other parts of the world for some time now, relatively few have been installed and evaluated in the Bay Area to date.  Consequently, municipalities in the Bay Area are struggling with implementation of the new NPDES requirements. Specifically, knowledge of design and installation challenges is limited; operation and maintenance requirements are unquantified; and pollutant removal effectiveness in the semi-arid Bay Area is unknown.  The goal of this project is to study the installation, operation and maintenance requirements, and pollutant removal efficiencies of two commonly used stormwater treatment measures, bioswales and media filtration units, located along a major transit corridor in Fremont, CA.  The information collected for this project will help municipalities to establish budgets and staffing requirements to meet the new stormwater requirements, as well as establish pollutant removal efficiencies of the two treatment measures.
 

Purpose: In recent years, municipalities throughout the Bay Area have been struggling to meet budgeting needs in these lean economic times. Concurrently, regulatory requirements have been increasing, not the least of which has been the implementation of the enhanced stormwater requirements for new and redevelopment projects. The enhanced requirements mandate that both public and private development projects incorporate site design measures to maximize perviousness, source controls and stormwater treatment controls into project design. Municipalities are finding it difficult to meet the new requirements, particularly with regard to calculating the staff hours needed and financial assets required to implement the stormwater requirements and to maintain treatment measures located on public property in the long-term. Several elements will be incorporated into the evaluation in order to identify the resources needed for municipalities to include the new requirements into public projects. The elements are as follows: 1) Challenges and considerations for incorporating the treatment measures into the design of the project will be documented; 2) Installation challenges and lessons learned will be catalogued; 3) Operation and maintenance requirements will be examined; and 4) Pollutant removal effectiveness of the treatment measures will be studied.

Keywords:

Watersed Management Strategies:

Functional Areas: