Hydrologic shortcomings of conventional urban stormwater management and opportunities for reform

Abstract

Conventional approaches to stormwater management for environmental protection fail because they do not address all of the changes to the flow regime caused by conventional stormwater drainage. In this paper, we contrasted the hydrologic effects of two conventional approaches to urban stormwater management - (a) drainage-efficiency focused and (b) pollutant-load-reduction focused - identifying their shortcomings and contrasting their hydrologic outcomes with those of a proposed alternative approach focused on restoring important elements of the natural flow regime. Under conventional approaches, both high-flow and low-flow hydrology remain perturbed. We suggest that urban stormwater managemen..