Total Stormwater Solutions Multiple infrastructure solutions exist, from aquifer recharge and catchment to treatment and the aforementioned Flood-MAR. Which ones are successful depends on investments and planning. Sanfilippo recognizes there are multiple options on the market for stormwater treatment and management, infiltration, and detention. “To truly solve the challenge, we need to start planning at individual development sites to ensure the stormwater is treated before it hits the reservoirs.” Metcalf agrees: “We cannot hold onto every single drop of water; we need to be smart. We need to understand how our natural environment would have originally infiltrated stormwater and use this to guide the infrastructure path.” Deep infiltration is one solution for urban built environments with the goal of capturing and treating water on-site. “The goal is to recharge underground aquifers without affecting the natural flow of water from where it fell to where it’s going to be stored,” continued Metcalf. “We believe the most sustainable strategy is to capture, treat, and infiltrate stormwater at the source without moving water off-site, but this can be a challenge without proper infrastructure, especially as larger storms seem to be occurring more frequently.” Another solid option: catchment processes designed to capture and filter out trash that would otherwise wind up in the oceans or reservoirs. For the encroaching snowpack, Metcalf has a solution: “Rethinking infrastructure to utilize natural resources more sustainably will help maintain water supply well into the future.” The Flood-MAR option, while appealing on the surface, calls for a bit of a geographical reality check. Talking about thousands of acres of land is one thing, but what about solutions for smaller pieces of land? Metcalf explains: “While states are celebrating farmers flooding their land to help recharge groundwater aquifers and build up future resources, there’s already technology—manufactured solutions—that can do this more efficiently and more sustainably in densely populated areas. This is where options like deep infiltration should be considered and utilized. Products such as StormCapture® and MaxWell® offer the ideal technology and sustainability for taking stormwater management into the next phase nationwide.” “This ongoing problem has taken decades to evolve to where we are,” said Sanfilippo. “One single solution doesn’t exist—it’s the suite of solutions that’s needed, the branching out into new technologies to handle and manage newly evolving water challenges.” The Future of Stormwater Solutions “Nationalizing regulations is important,” said Sanfilippo. “Right now, the EPA has broad national regulations, but each state manages their own water to be sure it’s free of pollutants. There are no national regulations that apply to stormwater to ensure a consistent amount of pollutant removal or flood mitigation.”
Installation of MaxWell® Drywells in Los Angeles. Drywells allow for deep infiltration of stormwater into native soils below the urban landscape.
The water cycle within a natural environment vs. a built environment. Engineered stormwater management solutions are designed to mimic the natural water cycle by capturing, treating, and infiltrating stormwater on-site reducing flood risk and maximizing the conservation of our world’s most valuable resource, water, for generations to come.
In process are ASTM standards for stormwater treatment devices, which, when created, would allow the entire country to be on the same stormwater regulation page, resulting in change on a greater scale. But be prepared: before that happens, we’ll most likely see the same problems we’re seeing in California arise in growing built environment communities with no existing regulations. Metcalf believes collaboration is a key element of success: “In some places, pressure is being put on cities to solve the problem, but they don’t have the space to do it. The key: partnerships and collaboration between cities and states.” On the product side of the solutions equation, proper maintenance of systems is necessary. On-site infiltration is a leading answer, according to Sanfilippo. “It’s not just stormwater—it’s all water. We view all water as one holistic resource, and stormwater is a significant part of that. The best thing we can do is efficiently and safely put stormwater back into the ground the way it was before we were here.”
MATIKA MADE is area general manager at Oldcastle Infrastructure, a CRH company
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June 2023 csengineermag.com
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