W10 AM Life Cycle Approaches to Water Resources
Wednesday, 16 November 2005: 8:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 341-342

(KIR-1117-847084) Life Cycle Approaches to Suburban and Exurban Stormwater Management.

Kirk, B¹, Bowden, B¹, Erickson, J¹, Roseen, R², Todd, J², Voinov, A², ¹ Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA² Center for Stormwater Treatment Evaluation and Verification, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

ABSTRACT- Over the last two decades the goals of stormwater management, initially focused on flood control, have gradually broadened to include water quality, which continues to be defined by an increasingly larger number of criteria pollutants. The scope has also broadened to include the impacts of sprawling residential and commercial development. And as water resource pressures in US population centers increase nationwide, using and retaining stormwater and recharging local aquifers have become yet another objective. In meeting these objectives of flood protection, water quality control, and groundwater recharge; regulation has focused almost entirely on controlling site and (literal) downstream impacts with little to no concern for the (figurative) upstream impacts associated with the provision, operation, and decommissioning of the management systems. As a result of heightened stormwater standards, increasingly intensive stormwater management is applied to increasingly smaller catchments and an increasing number of development activities. To achieve these higher standards a host of structural and non-structural stormwater best management practices (BMPs) are being recommended and applied prescriptively, without regard to their net (upstream and downstream) consequences. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been used to systematically evaluate the long-term, indirect, and cumulative non-monetary impacts of human activities including, recently, urban water systems. As such LCA may provide a truer quantification of the net or total environmental benefit of employing specific stormwater BMPs, or a clearer sense of what aspects of stormwater management are most effective. For this reason LCA is being used to compare multiple conventional and low-impact development (LID) BMPs under evaluation at a BMP performance verification center in New England. The life cycle inventory data from these evaluations are being applied to site specific management scenarios using the US EPA TRACI assessment method to develop a streamlined LCA methodology directed at practical comparisons and design guidance for stormwater designers and decision makers.

Key words: life cycle assessment, stormwater, low impact development, traci