Bagging Industrial Drains: A Solid Media Survey of Stormwater Contamination

Conventional approaches to stormwater quality evaluation combine continuous flow rate monitoring and automated sample collection for chemical analysis to derive an event mean concentration for each pollutant of concern. This approach requires expensive flow monitoring and automated sample collection equipment and the costly analysis of high numbers of water samples. Consequently, such monitoring is prohibitively expensive and is rarely conducted. We trialled an alternative monitoring approach using adsorptive solid media, developed to evaluate a stormwater education and enforcement (E&E) program targeted at industrial precincts in the City of Kingston. Adsorptive solid media are secured in stormwater drains for subsequent analysis of accumulated pollutant concentrations, thus providing an integrated measure of pollutant concentrations after a standard period of exposure. This approach is more cost-effective than continuous monitoring as the lower variability of pollutant concentrations in solid media compared to water obviates the need for analysis of high numbers of samples.