The Rhode Island Stormwater Management and Treatment Demonstration Facility

Robert L. Carothers Library and Learning Commons

The occurrence of toxic heavy metals from Rhode Island highways, verified in a report completed by Thiem, Bade & Alkhatibe in 1998, showed that cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc exceeded EPA’s acute and/or chronic water quality criteria. Besides toxic metals, stormwater also contains petroleum hydrocarbons, nutrients, and microbial matter as well as many other chemical compounds (Goebel et al., 2007). These toxic stormwater constituents are easily washed into water bodies, causing a decrease in overall stream diversity. The selection of the various, commercially available stormwater runoff commercial systems relies mostly on unverified manufacturer’s data or is based on performance reports from other parts of the country where local environmental conditions are much different than those in Rhode Island. The focus of this joint-research effort is to provide state agencies and the URI transportation community with a new facility where BMP structures can be evaluated against the manufacturer’s claims and under environmental conditions prevailing in our state. This facility will be known as the “Rhode Island Stormwater Management and Treatment Demonstration Facility” (RI SDF). Our research efforts can be groups in three major research taks. Task I revolves around the set-up of the RI SDF facility. Task II focuses the contaminant removal efficiencies of a commercial hydrodynamic separator unit, while the Task III seeks to evaluate the performance of pervious concrete amended with organo-soils. Task II and III will be the first projects to take advantage of the newly built RI SDF site.