Assessment of the removal potentials of selected EU Water Framework Directive priority pollutants within stormwater Best Management Practices.

An objective of the multi-disciplinary EU Framework 6 project ScorePP (Source Control Options for Reducing Emissions of Priority Pollutants) is the identification and assessment of appropriate emission control technologies to limit the release of priority pollutants (as identified by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD)) to receiving waters. This paper focuses on stormwater as the source of these pollutants and provides an assessment of the ability of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) to remove a selected range of WFD priority pollutants. In the absence of field data on the removal of many of the WFD priority pollutants by BMPs, a pragmatic approach involving available information is presented to support stormwater practitioners in this area. The systematic unit operating approach for assessing the comparative pollutant removal potentials of different types of BMPs originally described by Scholes et al., (2005) has been further developed and applied to 8 organic compounds, 3 organometallic compounds and 2 metals. The results of the application of this approach are presented and discussed, and a proposal describing the support this approach can contribute to the wider BMP-selection process is developed.