Quantifying the success of stormwater control measure networks using effective imperviousness

The deleterious effects of directly-connected impervious surfaces on urban streams have been widely recognized. To deal with these effects, the use of stormwater control measures that aim to disconnect impervious surfaces and prevent stormwater from reaching the stream has surged. However, we lack widespread use of consistent metrics that describe how effective these stormwater control measures are for mitigating the effects of untreated stormwater. Using total impervious area neglects the effect of stormwater control measures whereas directly-connected impervious area assumes that stormwater control measures perform perfectly. Comparing the success of stormwater control measures across many watersheds and cities will require use of consistent metrics of effective imperviousness, describing actual performance of stormwater control measures in reducing impervious areas hydraulically connected to the stream. This work applies two published approaches to quantify effective imperviousness, one that measures the frequency of downstream flow disturbances and another that computes parameters from a paired rainfall-runoff regression analysis. We apply these approaches in two settings: 1) two watersheds with new low impact development in Clarksburg, Maryland, USA and 2) five watersheds with stormwater retrofits in Melbourne, Australia. These methods gave largely similar results, with differences in effective imperviousness ranging from 1%-9%. Using these approaches in Clarksburg, the effective imperviousness for the treatment watersheds was 6–12%, whereas the total imperviousness was 33–44% and the directly-connected imperviousness was 0%. In Clarksburg, effective imperviousness better described stream hydrologic and biotic outcomes compared to either total imperviousness or directly-connected imperviousness. In Melbourne, effective imperviousness was a better metric for hydrologic and water quality changes that are likely to provide ecological benefits. In both cases, new development and retrofits, we demonstrate the utility of effective imperviousness metrics for predicting stream outcomes and how these metrics may be used to understand the success of stormwater control measure using a consistent metric.Author summary: Comparing the success of stormwater control measures across many watersheds and cities will require use of consistent metrics of effective imperviousness. These metrics should describe actual performance of stormwater control measures for reducing impervious areas hydraulically connected to the stream. This work applies two metrics to quantify effective imperviousness: one that measures the frequency of downstream flow disturbances and another that computes parameters from a paired rainfall-runoff regression analysis. We apply these metrics in two settings with low impact development: Clarksburg, Maryland, USA and Melbourne, Australia. Effective imperviousness better described stream hydrologic and stream health outcomes compared to either total imperviousness or directly-connected imperviousness in both settings. This work demonstrates how to apply these approaches in two common stormwater contexts, new development and retrofits, and contributes to efforts to compare stormwater control measure success across watersheds using consistent metrics.