Advantages And Disadvantages Of Stormwater Spillover

Although communities upstream a watershed need not be worried about water runoff containing pollutants, clouds containing the contaminated water can travel even to upstream

For more than 50 years since the Central and Southern Florida Project, major ventures have been ongoing which have focused on the provision of fresh water for human-development projects and flood protection. In order to provide water for residential, commercial, and agricultural uses, the natural flow of hundreds of small rivers and streams contained within the Everglades were altered. Revisions included redirecting river flows from winding to straight, draining wetland areas to provide agricultural land, and channelizing rivers by creating high concrete banks to provide flood control. Consequently, the Everglades and its dependent natural community have been highly impacted in the most adverse way.

Storm water moves it’s way across streets, sidewalks, and lawns. As it travels it picks up pollutants such as fertilizer, pet waste, sediment, and other chemicals that may be on the ground. This waste can find its way into the streams and rivers. These may create dead zones that kill marine life. Dead zones are hypoxic areas in bodies of water caused by nutrient pollution from runoff. The sediment that comes along with the water ends up blocking sunlight from reaching underwater grass and suffocates shellfish. Depending on how fast the water is going, it can flood certain areas like urban, suburban, forests, and wetlands. Water tends to travel faster on surfaces that are impervious.

Storm water runoff gets formed by man-made areas such as driveways, parking areas and roofs. All of these types of surfaces are waterproof surfaces, so when they are placed around lakes, they tend to collect and transport precipitation over the land instead of allowing the water to penetrate into the soil. Storm water runoff affects the soil greatly along with all of the wild life and vegetation that needs the soil to live and form. That is the reason that areas of land around the lakes in Michigan have soil with lesser value than other

The primary goals and objectives of the City’s Stormwater Utility are to proactively maintain the existing stormwater infrastructure and identify the City’s future stormwater system needs and improvements that protect its natural resources, enhances the City’s aesthetics, ensures public safety and improves the quality of life for all who live in and visit our city. This can only be accomplished through partnerships with all city departments, regulatory agencies, developers and the public.

One of the recurring problems at Howard County is the large quantities of stormwater runoff that flow into nearby streams. This is due to meteorological factors and physical characteristics including: land use changes. The more impervious surfaces there are the more surface runoff there will be; thus, placing adverse effects upon the environment. To be exact, these stormwater runoffs carry car oils, fertilizers, pet waste, litter, and sediment to the Chesapeake bay. Hence, 20% of the chesapeake bay’s pollution is due to stormwater runoff. However, not only does storm water contribute to pollution, but it also harms wildlife and its environment, as well as cause floods, erosion, and property damage. To address such issue, Howard Community College

To address this issue, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NYS DEC have recently increased their attention to stormwater management. Explicitly requiring permits for municipalities in New York State that are located near urbanized areas, and have their storm sewer system separate from their sanitary sewer systems. Unlike municipalities with combined sewer systems, an MS4 discharges untreated stormwater directly into the nearest body of water. This type of system can be detrimental for numerous reasons and has ultimately resulted in the EPA’s creation of a federal regulation known as the Stormwater Phase II. It was published in the Federal Register on December 8, 1999 and has since effected every MS4 community in New York State (US EPA, 2005).

Extensive amounts of litter were observed both in (figure 8) and around the creek, this aspect of human interaction clearly is degrative within this environment Increased flood risk due to surface impermeability this disrupts the water cycle and increases subsequent erosion

Aquatic biologists from the Cape Cod National Seashore have published newsletters stating that “increased intertidal volume produces greatly increased tidal flushing. Better flushing will reduce floodwater mosquito breeding on the wetland surface, dilute the presently high fecal coliform counts that have closed river-mouth shellfish beds, and improve water-column aeration by flooding the wetland twice each day with oxygen-rich Cape Cod Bay water” (CCNS, 2011). After the restoration begins taking place and the water levels are allowed to rise, the greater amounts of water will impact where they once dominated in the wetland soils that have fallen to being drained by the dike. This will, in turn, offset the chemical effects of the dam that caused acidity issues and toxic metal presence which has killed off fish populations in adjacent effected waterways (Portnoy and Giblin,

Stormwater is water produced by rain or melting snow, which can rapidly flow over impervious surfaces into streams. Upland development magnifies the occurrence of stream bank erosion and in-stream nutrient pollution, which also have indirect negative effects. When stream bank erosion occurs, eroding sediment causes an increase in turbidity. Heavy stormwater flows into streams mixes the streambed sediment, which also increases turbidity, and ultimately causes declines in aquatic biota (Waters 1995). Therefore, negative externalities of upland development include

However storm surges also impact those further inland as well, and this is can be seen through the secondary impacts of Hurricane Sandy. Severe flooding along the coast dumped about eleven billion gallons of raw and untreated sewage in the waterways from Washington DC to Connecticut- this resulting in more damage than flooding alone. This starts to convey weaknesses in the essay title, that perhaps it is too simplistic in its assertion.

The political and economic oriented decisions made before and after Hurricane Hazel was a lack of political will to understand the natural ecology of Toronto. Instead of choosing the simple and straightforward plan proposed to maintain the forested areas and water bodies, channelization and engineered streams or subsurface conveyance were financially supported by all level of government to meet urban development goals. The historical connection between the intensification and storm water management blunders have resulted in the high concentrations of contaminants and more intense frequent floods. By altering and removing swamps, ponds, soils, vegetative cover and streams from the Toronto landscape and replacing these natural systems with impervious

We live in an age where most environments on earth have been impacted by anthropogenic activities. For thousands of years, humans have been a natural component of ecosystems across the globe (Chapin et al, 2011). Human-environmental interaction contributes to processes that affect fluvial environments. For example, impervious surfaces are ubiquitous in urban areas; these anthropogenic surfaces reroute runoff (among other things), which can ultimately impact the morphology, water quality, vegetation, and floodplain soils of a local watershed, if it is near an urban area. Regardless of the anthropogenic presence throughout environments across the globe, ecological benchmarks can be set—physical, chemical, and biological—regarding what constitutes a healthy, natural environment. These parameters are important factors in ecological remediation activities and synonymous with the term “reference condition.” Based on a spectrum of watershed conditions—ranging from reference to

Another reason for this scientific assumption is that the Downtown area, which is inundated with impervious covered surfaces, will produce runoff, especially in the event of a flash flood, and will meet in this same area along Clearwater River near Ralston (Keller, 2008, p. 269).

Flood control is a public good that helps to prevent flooding which, benefits the community, but can cause market failure.