Urban Stormwater Retrofitting

The stormwater professionals interviewed for this story agreed that it’s a positive trend, and healthy for residents and the environment that municipalities are putting an increased emphasis on treating runoff in urban areas.

Manufacturers and municipal officials also agreed that this segment of the industry will continue to grow as federal treatment regulations grow ever stricter.

“The underlying mantra of ‘treat it all’ is driving the development of stormwater treatment in urban areas,” says Mark Sheldon of Romtec Utilities in Roseberg, OR. Sheldon’s company makes submersible pumps that are often used in tight-fitting urban projects. Read more

An Innovative Solution to Building Capacity

Lift station, detention pond make Union City development possible

- By Meghan Monson
Three years ago, officials in Union City, Calif., got some good news—and some bad news. The good news was that a developer was interested in building two major residential developments near the center of the city. The bad news? The storm drainage infrastructure in that area, the Line M channel, did not have the capacity to handle the additional runoff that the new construction would generate.

Ownership issues complicated the situation. The property slated for development was within Union City borders, but Alameda County was responsible for Line M, a concrete-lined open drainage channel that runs through the center of the city. With Line M at capacity, there was no way of discharging additional storm water, and that meant no development of any kind on the Union City site. Read more

Stormwater Pump Station – Franklin Park, IL

The village of Franklin Park, Ill. is home to about 20,000 people and includes the fourth largest industrial area in the state. Grand Avenue is a main east-west route between the area south of O’Hare International Airport and Chicago to the east. Rail lines intersecting Grand Ave. include the only north-south route of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad. Dozens of trains cross Grand Ave. every day.

Municipal leaders have been working for nearly 50 years to build an underpass designed to alleviate the traffic congestion at railroad crossings along Grand Avenue. “It was a horrible backup problem that impacted every driver on the road,” says David Talbot of Clark Dietz Engineers, who serves as the village engineer. In one spot, for example, two sets of railroad tracks were placed a thousand feet apart, which created safety and emergency services issues when traffic was stuck between them. Read more