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Current knowledge about the microbial communities that occur in in urban road runoff is scarce. Road runoff of trafficked roads can be heavily polluted and is treated by stormwater quality improvement devices (SQIDs). However, microbes may influence the treatment process of these devices or could lead to stress resistant opportunistic microbial strains. In this study, the microbial community in the influent, effluent and the filter materials for the removal of dissolved heavy metals of two different SQIDs were analyzed to determine the microbial load, retention, composition, and mobile resistance genes. Although the microbes were replaced by new taxa in the effluent, there was no major retention of microbial genera. Further, the bacterial abundance of the SQIDs effluent was relatively stable over time. The heavy metal content correlated with intl1 and with microbial genera. The filter media itself was enriched with Intl1 gene cassettes, carrying several heavy metal and multidrug resistance genes (e.g. czrA, czcA, silP, mexW and mexI), indicating that this is a hot spot for horizontal gene transfer. Overall, the results shed light on road runoff microbial communities, and pointed to distinct bacterial communities within the SQIDs, which subsequently influence the microbial community and the genes released with the treated water.

Stormwater quality improvement devices use sedimentation as a pre-treatment step to separate contaminant laden particulate matter (PM) from traffic area runoff. Multiple studies describe worse settling behavior during the cold season. This paper is written in response to a decreased PM retention that was observed in the cold season during a 20-month monitoring of a sedimentation tank. However, the data was insufficient to assess the two factors that influence sedimentation during the cold season—temperature and de-icing salt application. Therefore, simplified discrete particle settling models were used to determine the influence of temperature and de-icing salt. These influences were compared to other factors, like overflow rate, particle density, and particle size distribution. To calculate the effect of temperature and de-icing salt on density and viscosity, two empirical models were applied for the first time in this field. The calculations showed that de-icing salt (NaCl) had a negligible influence on the retention of PM. However, reducing the temperature from 20 °C to 5 °C was shown to decrease the total suspended solid removal efficiency by up to 8%. The order of influencing factors was found to be particle size distribution >> overflow rate > particle density > temperature.

Separation of particulate matter (PM) is the most important process to achieve a reduction of contaminants present in road runoff. To further improve knowledge about influencing factors on the settling of road-deposited sediment (RDS), samples from three sites were collected. Since particle size distribution (PSD) has the strongest effect on settling, the samples were sieved to achieve comparable PSDs so that the effects of particle density, shape, fluid temperature, and deicing salt concentration on settling could be assessed using settling experiments. Based on the experimental data, a previously proposed model that describes the settling of PM was further developed and validated. In addition, RDS samples were compared to a standard mineral material, which is currently in use to evaluate treatment efficiency of stormwater quality improvement devices. The main finding was that besides PSD, particle density is the most important influencing factor. Particle shape was thoroughly described but showed no significant improvement of the prediction of the settled mass. Temperature showed an effect on PM settling; deicing salts were negligible. The proposed models can sufficiently predict the settling of RDS in settling column experiments under varying boundary conditions and are easily applicable.

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