Description
Stormwater runoff harbors many pollutants and is a leading cause of impairment in receiving water bodies. Oil and grease (O&G) are particularly hazardous stormwater pollutants, due to the damage they can inflict on aquatic environments and infrastructure with only a low volume of the pollutants. Industrial sites pose significant risk of contributing non-point source pollutants, such as O&G, due to the nature of the sites. Site conditions at industrial sites often make it difficult to gather stormwater runoff samples into the standard grab sample bottle. In order to address this issue, field trials were conducted to compare an intermediate sampling devices made of Teflon and an automatic sampler with Teflon tubing against the standard grab sample. The intermediate sampling devices and automatic sampler were able to collect a concentration of O&G in a close range to the concentrations the manual grab sample collected and all collected samples were within the normal mean range of O&G concentration found in runoff from parking lots. Additionally, the intermediate sampling devices and automatic sampler with Teflon tubing studied here were able to collect as many samples or more with O&G detected in the sample than the standard grab sample. To complement this study an Environmental Protection Agency Storm Water Management Model (EPA SWMM) water quality model was built using the national O&G event mean concentration (EMC) for stormwater for comparison. The comparison of the water quality model using the EMC and collected site data displayed evidence that collected site data were close in value but consistent values for the length of time sampled were not found as is displayed in the model.
