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Stormwater Bioswale Failure

There are a lot of great designers out there offering workable ideas for stormwater treatment and control.  Parking lot bioswales (depressed areas to treat and/or control storomwater runoff are a great example of their thinking.  This is only one example:

 
With anything, once it's built, it requires maintenance to function properly.  The permitted facility shown below is rather new (around a year old) and it's intended function is already significantly impaired. Here' is what sometimes happens:

Outlet structure blocked by debris and dead plant material.
Landscaping/sod has died and sides are eroded.










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Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 30, 2017 at 9:14 AM

    What was the K value for the soil profile?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jim Canter, AICPAugust 30, 2017 at 12:58 PM

    It appears to be sandy clay and topsoil, so it's erodible soil. It either wasn't stabilized with sod, or it all just washed away.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 5, 2017 at 2:32 PM

    Your sheet flow appears high. Slow the sheet flow and improve percolation. I need more data. How widespread, this event, requiring attention?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jim CanterSeptember 5, 2017 at 5:38 PM

    The amount of water makeing it to the swale appears to be ok. Velocity is slowed somewhat by parking blocks. There is an outfall structure, and it looks like percolation was ignored in the design. Overall, it's a maintenance, not a design issue.

    ReplyDelete

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