Combined sewer overflows in urban areas - interpreting and comparing European CSO monitoring results

Combined sewer overflows in urban areas - interpreting and comparing European CSO monitoring results

Aarts, A.L.F.
Langeveld, J.G.
Ten Veldhuis, J.A.E.
Rietveld, L.C.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Water Management

2013-08-28

Since the initiation of environmental legislation, monitoring campaigns have been done to estimate the characteristic pollutant concentrations of combined sewer overflow water. Such local campaigns are expensive due to the large number of events which should ideally be followed. This study focused on whether available concentration ranges from campaigns published in the literature could be used to estimate the pollution concentration of the overflow water at other CSO locations, and to which extent catchment characteristics explain the observed differences in pollutant concentrations. For this study, a database was composed with measurement data from CSO monitoring campaigns available in the literature. In total, the characteristics of 287 CSO events from 24 catchments at 8 European countries were included. The results showed that the TSS, COD, BOD, TKN, P, Cd, Pb and Zn event mean concentrations were different between the catchments but not NH4+. The correlation analysis revealed that the pollutant concentrations couldn’t be explained by the catchment size, impermeable area or annual rainfall, but rather by storm event characteristics and number of previous dry weather days. It is suggested that catchments could be possibly characterized in terms of those characteristics. Monitoring campaigns should further include information about variables such as the sewer system.

combined sewer overflow
correlation
monitoring
pollutants

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a45cb57a-c7be-42eb-a92f-6de3d7fc2f1c

7th International Conference on Sewer Processes and Networks, Sheffield, UK, 28-30 August 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Author(s)