Managing Urban Stormwater – Harvesting and Reuse

Offers practical advice on how to plan, design, manage and monitor stormwater harvesting and reuse projects for existing or new urban development.

 
It covers a range of reuse applications for harvested stormwater including: residential use, industrial use, irrigating public areas, and aquifer storage and recovery.  Using stormwater as make-up water for ornamental ponds and water features is briefly discussed in section 2.24 (p8) and Table 4.5 (p26).

 
This resource does not address using harvested stormwater as a source for large potable water supply systems. Guidance on such systems is provided under the National Water Quality Management Strategy—see Related Resources.

 
Appendix A provides a two-page overview of ‘key considerations’ for stormwater harvesting projects. This guideline outlines a “default risk assessment approach” which is considered appropriate for any scheme that meets all of the ‘threshold criteria’ listed in table 4.3 (p25). For proposed schemes above any of the threshold criteria set, the guidelines recommend further risk assessments to properly inform additional controls that might be required from the outset. Table 6.4 (page 49) of the State Guidelines recommends ‘final’ water quality criteria. These largely depend upon the intended application. Table 6.5 outlines additional control measures and operational practices that should be in place— again this largely depends on both the level of water ‘quality’ treatment and intended application. Readers should refer to the more recent national guidelines on stormwater harvesting – which may differ from the risk assessment advice set out in this resource - see Related Resources.

 
The remainder of the document provides 12 case studies; including available data on cost (capital, recurrent and lifecycle), estimated yield, pollutant load reduction, water quality and process diagrams.


Appendix D draws upon several reference documents (current at the time of publishing) to provide estimated maintenance costs of a range of stormwater treatment measures: retention basins, constructed wetlands, infiltration trenches, sand filters, vegetated swales, bioretention systems and GPTs.