Stormwater

A sprayed-on structural coating enables rehabilitation of large stormwater pipes without traffic disruption and at major cost savings

There’s a word for traffic disruptions around Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital: ugly. When two dual pipelines running deep beneath one of the area’s busiest arteries showed signs of deterioration, no one wanted to repair it by conventional dig-and-replace methods.

Instead, the Pennsylvania Department o fTransportation (PennDOT) settled on a trenchless solution involving a spray-on structural coating. The job saved months of traffic disruption and an estimated $2.6million.

Urban runoff is the greatest single source of pollution to the waters and beaches of Santa Monica Bay. The bay, in turn, is an important economic engine. To protect the bay for the future, Santa Monica has developed an aggressive, innovative and comprehensive Watershed Management Plan for the next 20 years. It applies cutting-edge technology, capital improvements and best management practices to reduce urban runoff pollution.

Innovative green technology is part of the answer to help the City of Los Angeles meet stormwater pollution reduction mandates and achieve its long-range goals for restoring one of its vital waterways. The years have not been kind to the Los Angeles River, a vital component of the city’s stormwater and flood-control system. Always proactive, the city had been searching for financially feasible ways to improve its stormwater system and enhance water quality in the river before it reaches the Pacific Ocean.

When five inches of rainfall in a two-hour period revealed that its system’s stream conflicts were more significant than originally thought, Johnson County Wastewater (JCW) decided to take a proactive approach to maintaining its sanitary sewer conveyance system. Its efforts have gained national recognition for forward-thinking system management and maintenance that uses asset-management information, multi-tier physical pipeline inspection, and analysis tools such as geomorphology, hydrology and plant taxonomy to develop the most effective and sustainable means of rehabilitation.

The City of Cambridge, Mass., one of the nation’s most densely populated cities, faced a critical need in 2000 to improve its stormwater infrastructure and stop significant flooding within one of its most populated and desirable neighborhoods. With the help of experts at SEA Consultants and MWH Americas Inc, the city’s Department of Public Works (known locally as The Works) devised an extraordinary solution: 1,000-footlong storage tanks under the busy, narrow streets.

The Twin Cities suburb of Bloomington, Minn., uses the area’s natural resources and the built-in advantages of seasonal events to maintain a diverse stormwater system. To ensure the health and optimum performance of the system’s manmade and natural components, the Stormwater Utility conducts an ever-evolving, comprehensive, annual storm-drainage maintenance program. This multifaceted program plays a major role in meeting the city’s commitment to improving surface water quality and reducing pollution under a stormwater discharge permit issued by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

New Orleans officials and contractors marshal 100 vacuum and combination trucks in a massive effort to clean the city's storm sewers after Hurricane Katrina. Published: Municipal Sewer & Water Magazine

The historic Connecticut community of Norwalk is testing what appears to be an effective way to reduce non-point source pollution. Faced with having to meet state EPA requirements for total maximum daily loadings (TMDLs) for the Norwalk River and Long Island Sound, public works director Harold Alvord needed an economical, non-invasive yet effective method to manage stormwater system pollution.