Comparative Assessment of Stormwater and Nonpoint Source Pollution Best Management Practices in Suburban Watershed Management

Abstract

Nonpoint source pollution control and stormwater management are two objectives in managing mixed land use watersheds like those in New Jersey. Various best management practices (BMPs) have been developed and implemented to achieve both objectives. This study assesses the cost-effectiveness of selected BMPs for agricultural nonpoint source pollution control and stormwater management in the Neshanic River watershed, a typical mixed land use watershed in central New Jersey, USA. The selected BMPs for nonpoint source pollution control include cover crops, prescribed grazing, livestock access control, contour farming, nutrient management, and conservation buffers. The selected BMPs for stormwater management are rain gardens, roadside ditch retrofitting, and detention basin retrofitting. Cost-effectiveness is measured by the reduction in pollutant loads in total suspended solids and total phosphorus relative to the total costs of implementing the selected BMPs. The pollution load reductions for these BMPs are based on the total pollutant loads in the watershed simulated by the Soil and Water Assessment Tool and achievable pollutant reduction rates. The total implementation cost includes BMP installation and maintenance costs. The assessment results indicate that the BMPs for the nonpoint source pollution control are generally much more cost-effective in improving water quality than the BMPs for stormwater management.

Stormwater Management Criteria for On-Site Pollution Control: A Comparative Assessment of International Practices

“…While initially focused on flood mitigation, a broader range of benefits is today expected from stormwater management and LID (Fletcher et al 2014). Indeed, distributed stormwater control not only reduces peak-flow and volumes so they match drainage systems capacities (Andoh and Declerck 1997), but also provides a cost effective solution (Taylor and Fletcher 2007;Qiu 2013) for water quality improvement through management of nonpoint runoff pollution associated with frequent rain events and moderate contamination levels. Small integrated best management practices (BMPs), such as bio-filtration, are usually promoted because they have been not only shown to efficiently retain runoff (temporarily or not), but also to remove noticeable amounts of stormwater pollutants (Hatt et al 2009;Gallo et al 2012).…”

Water Quality Assessment in a Less Anthropogenic Forest Stream in the Centre Region of Cameroon

“…Low values of temperature recorded during the whole study period in all stations could be due to the microclimate created by the canopy which reduces light rays considerably from reaching the water surface [17,3,18]. These low values have been observed in Mefou and Nga streams belonging to the same ecological zone by [19,8], and could be considered as forest stream characteristics [3,18].…”

Development Trend and Frontier of Stormwater Management (1980–2019): A Bibliometric Overview Based on CiteSpace

“…In the past few decades, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (e.g., rainstorms) caused by climate change have continued to increase, floods have become frequent, and water pollution has become increasingly serious [1][2][3][4][5][6]. These events lead water-related research to obtain increasing attention [7][8][9].…”