Urban Runoff and Stormwater Management Training By TONEX
The urban runoff and stormwater management training course introduces you to the basic principals of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs).
Stormwater or urban runoff refers to the rainwater in cities, over the constructed surfaces such as roads, parking lots, sidewalks, rooftops, or other asphalt and concrete built surfaces, which do not percolate through the soil after precipitation events. Such runoff is the major cause of flooding and water pollution in cities and urban areas. In one hand, runoff can lower the water table, as the water doesn’t penetrate into ground water, and on the other hand, it increases the water volume of streams and rivers, as municipal sewer discharge stormwater directly to streams and rivers.
The runoff running over the concrete and asphalt surfaces washes up different types of pollutants such as gasoline, motor oil, heavy metal, fertilizers, pesticides, trash, and other contaminants exits on urban roads, streets, and parking lots. In addition to these materials, sediments also are carried over in runoff. Sedimentation often lowers the water quality as it stays at the bottom of water bodies, which can over time increase the risk of infections and diseases. They also can cause damages to infrastructures and reduce the storage volume behind reservoirs, increasing the risk of flooding and the cost of fixing or building new reservoirs. Therefore, as you might know by now, managing the runoff and stormwater to avoid all of these problems and often dangers is necessary. In the urban runoff and stormwater management training course, we will discuss various types of pollutants in runoff, which types of surfaces can leak what pollutants in the water, and how to avoid them.
According to the EPA, stormwater can affect water in three ways:
- Short term changes in water quality; it happens right after precipitation events, leading to high concentration of one or more pollutants
- Long term changes in water quality; it occurs as a result of repeated precipitation
- Physical impacts because of high frequency and volume of runoff
Each of these can be prevented by certain tested methods and strategies often called BMPs. BMPs, or Best Management Practices, are combinations of methods that are effective, affordable, and feasible to prevent or reduce the amount of pollution or physical damages caused by runoff water. In the urban runoff and stormwater management training course, you will also learn about different ways that BMPs can improve the water quality:
- Prevention; avoids producing pollutants
- Reduction; decreases pollutants’ concentrations
- Treatment; treating pollutants
You also will learn about different categories of structural and nonstructural practices. However, the two methods are combined most of the time to control runoff.
Stormwater management tackles two categories of hydrology and ecology. In the urban runoff and stormwater management training course, we help you identify both hydrological and ecological issues associated with stormwater and train you to manage them.
In general, stormwater management is defined as managing the surface runoff. Therefore, it can be used for both rural and urban runoff applications. However, the urban runoff and stormwater management training course is focused only on the urban runoff because the stormwater cannot infiltrate the impermeable surfaces of the city streets and thus more critical to be controlled and monitored.
In contrary to the conventional stormwater management methods, in which high peak flows were drained away, in the modern management practices we rebuild the natural water cycle by storing the runoff water in retention basins, recharging groundwater through infiltration basins, or using the collected water as non-potable water supplies. Through the urban runoff and stormwater management training course, you gain knowledge about planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance of such methods.
The urban runoff and stormwater management training course teaches you to study the geological elements of the site you are going to design a BMP for and then based on the location, the potential pollution sources, the stormwater flow rate, and the budget of the project, you can choose and design the most suited method.
Who Should Attend?
The urban runoff and stormwater management training is a 2-day course suitable for engineers, scientists, and managers are or will be involved with designing methods and approaches to manage the stormwater in cities and urban areas.
What Will You Learn?
Below are the major topics we will cover in this seminar (more details can be found under the full course description):
- Overview Of Stormwater Management
- Stormwater Pollution Sources
- Stormwater Components
- Stormwater Impacts On Water Quality, Society, And Economics
- Stormwater Cycle
- Stormwater Management Challenges
- Non-Structural Best Management Practices (BMPs)
- Structural-BMPs Main Categories
- Structural BMPs
- Innovative BMPs
- Performing Verification
- Federal Regulations and Programs