A newly designed website now makes it easier for storm water professionals to evaluate BMPs, ensuring their creativity produces effective and reliable systems. Improvements in the International Stormwater BMP Database, www.bmpdatabase.org, were recently unveiled by the Water Environment Research Federation and its partners.
The database will better enable BMP searches, data collection and uploading and access to BMP performance analyses. Everyone from public officials and municipal storm water managers to designers and researchers will discover significant enhancements.
With the recent addition of 65 new BMP studies, the database now includes more than 300. A new analysis of all the BMPs in the database identifies how different types performed in removing a variety of pollutants. The performance descriptions can assess achievable effluent concentrations, assess effects of BMPs on total loadings and identify the frequency of potential violations of water quality criteria or other targets.
A new website provides ease of navigation based on the type of user. Data retrieval tools have been improved. New Excel-based data entry spreadsheets, a corresponding user's guide and a data upload tool simplify data collection and entry from data providers. The project is also working with large data providers to "open the pipeline" of BMP study submissions. Several large providers are using or adapting the database as their data storage tool and are regularly providing information to the database. To submit, e-mail Jane Clary at clary@wrightwater.com.
The project is providing support to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through its Urban BMP Performance Tool, a search engine offered on EPA's storm water National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program website. The EPA website links to the database site for more detailed BMP study information.
