Green Infrastructure Design for improving Stormwater Quality: Daybreak community in the United States West

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) design has been advocated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an ecological way to manage stormwater for better water quantity and quality. This new drainage design paradigm focuses on maintaining the natural hydrologic cycle and suggests treating runoff on-site in lieu of the old paradigm that prefers off-site treatment. This paper reports the performance benefits of GI design implemented in Daybreak, a 4,100-acre master-planned community in Utah, USA. Daybreak is also known as one of the largest GI projects in the arid west. Its GI design retains 100 percent of stormwater that falls on-site for up to a 100-year storm with no impacts on or connections to the municipal storm sewer system. Further, an ongoing water quality monitoring study is assessing the hydrologic performance of two sub watersheds within the community. Preliminary results show the performance benefits of a large bioswale. These benefits include substantial reductions of stormwater runoff volume and pollutant concentrations, including total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), total suspended solids (TSS), and heavy metals (Copper, Zinc, Lead).

Keywords

Landscape Performance / Ecosystem Services / Low-Impact Development / Ecological Design / USA

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press