Are BMP Criteria Really Environmentally Friendly

Abstract

Over the last eight to ten years, a number of Best Management Practices Manuals have been developed that address the control of urban runoff for receiving water quality protection. More recently, several papers that have investigated the effectiveness of these BMPs in protecting the environment and have concluded that they do not. Investigation of both the design practices and the effectiveness investigations reveals that there is a lot of ignorance in the scientific community about what constitutes a properly designed BMP and what it really achieves, with respect to environmental protection. Another issue that confuses the urban drainage community is defining what constitutes an socially acceptable urban stream. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art in BMP design practice and points out its strengths and weaknesses with respect to real protection of the downstream receiving water environment. The paper recommends a design criteria development approach that can be applied over a wide variety of climatologic, topologic, and geologic conditions to protect receiving waters systems.