Beff, Susan (2018) Impacts of Implementing High Efficiency Sediment Basins for Land Development Sediment Control within the Canberra Region. [USQ Project]
Abstract
With an increasing public awareness of environmental issues, and an increasing acknowledgement of professional and corporate responsibility, land development professionals face an ongoing concern with how to best manage sediment runoffs from active construction sites. While current standards and guidelines dictate the level of controls required, and legislation imposes penalties for non-compliance, there are opportunities for progressive professionals to seek out further controls to produce improved water quality outcomes.
High Efficiency Sediment Basins, or HES basins, are an emerging technology, currently in limited practice in southeast Queensland and New Zealand, which group together existing sediment basin practices with automation technologies to provide an enhanced treatment option for construction runoff. Large-scale land development construction typically suffers high sediment loads in stormwater runoff due to several factors: the amount of disturbed area at any one time, long timeframes and the probability of larger storm events, complexity of the projects, laxation of environmental controls as the work progresses and often, paradoxically, a lack of space to provide adequate sediment basin footprints.
Through a series of models based on likely future urban development areas in Canberra, this research has found that High Efficiency Sediment Basin prove to be an effective form of sediment basin control in the region. When considering the impacts of design such as land take and basin volume, the HES basins have matched or exceeded the outcomes found for standard basin design, and when considering water quality the research finds that HES basins could increase the hydrological effectiveness of a basin by more than 30%. This research also finds that although expensive to install, costs are expected to be lower over a three year lifecycle, which is typical of a large scale land development project in Canberra.
These results suggests that the impacts of High Efficiency Sediment Basins in the region would be largely positive, providing benefits to the environment, the development team and to the wider community.
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| Item Type: | USQ Project |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Civil Engineering and Surveying (1 Jul 2013 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Chowdhury, Rezaul |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Civil) |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Sep 2021 05:00 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Jun 2023 04:45 |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/40650 |
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