AN ASSESSMENT OF THE AVAILABILITY OF POLLUTANT CONSTITUENTS ON ROAD SURFACES

The quality of stormwater runoff from the urban environment is of incr easing concern to urban communities and, consequently, greater emphasi s is now being placed on the management of stormwater quality. An esse ntial need for this management is information about the drainage syste m and the impacts of alternative management approaches. This informati on, typically, is obtained through the use of catchment model systems which simulate the processes which influence both the quantity and qua lity of stormwater runoff. These model systems consist of a number of components with information flowing from one component to another; eac h of these components in turn comprised of process models. An importan t component of these systems for water quality modelling is the genera tion component where the mass of pollutant constituent available for t ransport during the storm event is estimated. Available information fo r use in the models applied to this task is extremely limited and, con sequently, the poor reliability of this initial information is reflect ed in the reliability of the predictions obtained from the catchment m odel system. presented herein are the results of a study investigating the build-up of pollutant constituents on a suburban road in the east ern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. It was found that the pollutant cons tituents available for transport during storm events were significantl y different from previously published data for North America. Furtherm ore, it was found that both rain and wind events lowered the available pollutant constituent mass on the road surface. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sci ence B.V.