Over the past few decades cities, states, and the federal government have been paying a lot more attention to storm runoff and how it’s treated. Plenty of scientific studies have shown that humans can no longer dump waste water, garbage, chemicals, and oils into the streams and rivers that run into the ocean without extreme consequences. The reefs are dying from several man-made causes, including too much fertilizer, pesticides, plastics, organic matter, and higher water temperatures. Nearly all of these causes can be addressed by proper prevention and stormwater treatments near their sources. Here are a few of the ways that can happen, even with the retro-fitting of debris separators and stormwater chambers underground to lessen the above ground footprint.
It All Starts With A Detailed Analysis
No stormwater treatment system can begin without first making a detailed analysis of the entire watershed to locate the sources and causes of contaminants. There are thousands of different things, from food packages to fertilizers, that can pollute the rainwater after it has fallen. Each type of contaminant will have its own solution.
The solutions can be as simple as requiring more garbage cans around a fast food outlet, to putting a catch basin on an empty lot. There are dozens of smaller solutions that can filter the water before it ever gets into the stormwater system and they all must be used.
Stormwater Separators Can Be Retrofitted
One of the latest solutions to filtering out many pollutants are the new breed of separators. Most have no moving parts and use the physics of gravity and water to separate the various types of pollutants. Light weight objects are town out on the top by the swirling motion of the water. That would be most garbage, leaves, plastics, paper, food containers, bottles and oils too.
These are usually fed into stormwater chambers underground that can be emptied by workers driving on a route using a large wastewater vacuum truck. All they have to do is lift a manhole cover, insert a giant hose and in about one minute, they’re done.
Heavier objects tend to settle to the bottom of the hydrodynamic chamber and they are then sent to stormwater chambers underground that are specially designed for that contaminant. It can either be vacuumed out by the same truck into a different holding tank or a different truck altogether. Most of these rain runoff filtering devices have an efficiency rating of over 80% of contaminants removed.
The Stormwater Can Go Through Several Filters
Of course, the first filter is the grate over the storm drain that can be designed to block larger items so that the street cleaners will catch most of the litter and garbage. Then the large underground separators take out another large percentage of the pollutants as well. After that, there are a variety of other types of stormwater filters that can be added inline that will target the exact kinds of chemicals like fertilizers, pesticides, silt, organic matter and even heavy metals that wash off of some industrial sites. There is a filtering device for almost everything you could encounter.
Treating stormwater from the minute it hits the ground over and over again until it’s allowed into a stream is the new normal. From catch basins to underground chambers, the water is cleaned of most of it’s contaminants as close to the original source as possible. Plus, since most of it takes place underground, the water won’t be super heated by the time it enters the natural watershed either. This is how the rivers and oceans can be saved but it starts at the watershed first.
