You are here:
EVALUATING INNOVATIVE STORMWATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES UNDER THE ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY VERIFICATION (ETV) PROGRAM
Citation:
Hackett, D., J. Schenk, AND M K. Stinson*. EVALUATING INNOVATIVE STORMWATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES UNDER THE ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY VERIFICATION (ETV) PROGRAM. Presented at Urban Stormwater: Enhancing Programs at the Local Level, Chicago, IL, February 17 - 20, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public
Description:
Assessing, controlling, and treating combined-sewer overflows (CSO), sanitary sewer overflows (SSO), and urban stormwater runoff have become priorities for communities. Improved and cost effective treatment technologies are needed to reduce the adverse impacts that wet weather flows (WWFs) can have on surface water quality. In October of 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) created a program to facilitate the deployment of such innovative technologies through performance verification and information dissemination. The goal of the Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program is to further environmental protection by substantially accelerating the acceptance and use of innovative commercially available treatment technologies. The ETV Program is intended to assist and inform the stakeholders involved in the design, distribution, permitting and purchase of environmental technologies. Since potential adverse effects on surface water quality from wet weather flow (WWF) sources has been targeted as a major environmental concern, the WWF Technologies Pilot was created as one of the 12 pilots EPA and NSF International have partnered to conduct this Pilot. Objective, quality-assured performance data will be made available to all parties in the WWF technology marketplace in the form of a Verification Report and Statement. These will be published on the Web sites, http://www.nsf.org/etv and http://www.epa.gov/etv. This paper focuses on one of the five areas selected as a high priority within the WWF pilot, stormwater treatment. The stormwater treatment devices or systems being evaluated are designed to intercept and thereby reduce pollutants before they can adversely affect surface water quality. Their furnction is to serve as an effective Best Management Practice (BMP) to assist end users in complying with meeting NPDES Phase I and Phase II stormwater compliance permits and other regulatory requirements for protecting surface runoff quality. Based on their operating principles, there are three basic types of BMP devices that are being verified: in-line filtration devices, hydrodynamic separators, and in-drain filtration devices. An overview of the generic protocol prepared for use as a template for site-specific test plan preparation is presented. The names of applied vendors, the names and operating principles of their devices, performance measures included in their test plans, and test site locations are presented. The field-testing organization that developed the test plan and performed the testing for each device is identified. In conclusion, the testing process and available data is discussed.