The Rouge Project has monitored discharge at 13 continuous flow gauging stations serving drainage areas varying from nine to 410 square miles for the past 11 years as a means of evaluating existing conditions and tracking progress. This study evaluates the flow regime of the Rouge Watershed including the analysis of a decade or more of data, and status with regard to ecological targets. The temporal resolution of in-stream flow data required to establish long-term trends is also investigated by comparing flow exceedence frequency curves developed using 15-minute, hourly average, and daily average flow data and the Mann-Kendall analysis for trend at varying exceedence classes. Trend analysis of flow frequencies indicates that flow values have decreased, or have remained the same over the period of record examined for each flow monitoring station along the Main, Upper, and Middle Rouge Rivers. A strong trend of increasing flows was observed in the Lower Rouge River for flows in the low to midrange, primarily due to increased wastewater treatment plant discharges. The direction of trends predicted by flows measured at a 15-minute, hourly-average, and daily average time scale did not vary, although trend strength varied significantly. Fewer differences in trend strength were observed between 15-minute and hourly-average data than between 15-minute and daily-average data, indicating that hourly data are adequate for trend analysis. The overall number of ecological flow targets that were met did not increase at nine Rouge flow monitoring stations between the time periods of 1994-1999 and 2000-2005. Summer improvements of peak flows were observed at one station along the Lower Rouge River. Flows fell from within the acceptable tolerance range to below lower bounds at two stations, indicating a decrease in baseflow at those stations.
The Rouge River basin is an urban/suburban watershed of 48 communities that drains 466 square miles of southeastern Michigan and discharges into the Detroit River. The Rouge suffers from typical urban watershed stressors including discharges from combined sewer overflows (CSOs), sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), non-point sources, limited industrial discharges, contaminated sediments and high flow variability. These factors have resulted in public health advisories for fish consumption and water recreation, poor biotic communities, impoundment eutrophication, and damage to the stream channel morphology.The Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project (Rouge Project), funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) through Wayne County's Department of Environment, was initiated in 1992 to address these impairments. The project implemented an intensive monitoring program to assess existing conditions, identify primary pollution sources, and track long-term trends. Components of the program include continuous monitoring of dissolved oxygen (DO), water temperature, stream flow, and rainfall; intermittent dry and wet weather water quality sampling; and periodic assessments of the trophic status of major impoundments, stream geomorphology, sediment quality, and macro-invertebrate populations. After ten years, the sampling program has generated over 15 million records of data.Sampling conducted during the first few years of the project showed that E. coli bacteria concentrations were well above the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) water quality standards for both full and partial body contact recreation. DO deficiencies were prevalent particularly downstream of CSO areas and in river reaches with low stream flow. Nutrient concentrations were high particularly in impoundments, and one of the impoundments was contaminated by Poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).The Rouge Project implemented several watershed management activities to address these concerns, including construction of ten CSO retention treatment basins, sewer separation in six communities, participation of all 48 communities in a watershed-wide storm water management permit program, and several local remediation projects including the dredging of the PCB-contaminated impoundment, reconnection of an oxbow to a channelized portion of the river, and community illicit discharge detection programs.To evaluate the effectiveness of watershed management activities, DO and E. coli bacteria data collected from 1994 to 2002 were assessed using two different trend analysis techniques, linear regression and Seasonal Kendall analysis. At all locations with representative data substantial improvements in DO have been observed during both wet and dry weather conditions. In 2002, seven of the eight continuously monitored DO locations met the State DO standard more than 80 percent of the time.E. coli bacteria concentrations are also improving, particularly downstream of now controlled CSO outfalls. However, most locations are still...
A systems approach to combined sewer overflow control planning is considered that relies upon a proposed concept for classifying and attaining identified water body improvement goals integrating three general planning and implementation targets. These targets provide a basis for comprehensive watershed management planning and for the development of innovative plan implementation strategies. The principal advantage in applying this systems approach to storm water management is the reduction of effective impervious cover. That is, implementing low impact development and redevelopment concepts has the effect of reducing storm water impacts on receiving waters through decreasing the peak discharge rate, the total runoff volume, the stream velocities, and the frequency and severity of flooding during storms, while increasing the time for storm water to reach a stream and the stream baseflow rate between storms. Today, for communities served by combined sewer systems, the adoption of low impact development and redevelopment approaches translates directly into reduced public-sector costs of regulatory compliance with national and state water quality protection policies, laws, and regulations. In the near future, as water quality regulation of communities served by separate storm sewer systems evolves, the public-sector costs of compliance will be greatly reduced for communities that have adopted storm water regulations largely reliant on low impact development approaches. KEYWORDSLow impact development; low impact redevelopment; combined sewer overflow control planning; comprehensive watershed planning.
Recent advances in water quality and quantity monitoring technologies provide cost effective means of collecting large amounts of information for complex water quality problems. Technological advances in water quality data analysis, however, have lagged, especially for converting raw data into information which can support decisions, and robust software for managing and analyzing the information available. As part of a Rouge River National Wet Weather demonstration grant, a suite of software called Watershed Analysis Tools for Reporting, Statistics, Hypothesis-testing and Display (W A TRSHD) was designed, developed, and implemented. The W A TRSHD data analysis system was based on prescribed analysis techniques. To ensure WATRSHD's suitability for large scale water quality management projects, it was developed and demonstrated using data collected by the Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project (a database containing over six million records of water quality and quantity information). Data analysis techniques, software applications developed, and case studies are presented in this chapter.
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