The sources, impact and management of car park runoff pollution: A review

Abstract

Traffic emissions contribute significantly to the build-up of diffuse pollution loads on urban surfaces with their subsequent mobilisation and direct discharge posing problems for receiving water quality. This review focuses on the impact and mitigation of solids, metals, nutrients and organic pollutants in the runoff deriving from car parks. Variabilities in the discharged pollutant levels and in the potentials for pollutant mitigation complicate an impact assessment of car park runoff. The different available stormwater best management practices and proprietary devices are reported to be capable of reductions of between 20% and almost 100% for both suspended solids and a range of metals. This review contributes to prioritising the treatment options which can achieve the appropriate pollutant reductions whilst conforming to the site requirements of a typical car park. By applying different treatment scenarios to the runoff from a hypothetical car park, it is shown that optimal performance, in terms of ecological benefits for the receiving water, can be achieved using a treatment train incorporating permeable paving and bioretention systems. The review identifies existing research gaps and emphasises the pertinent management practices as well as design issues which are relevant to the mitigation of car park pollution.

Effects of Rainfall Intensity and Duration on the First Flush from Parking Lots

“…Urban stormwater runoff mobilizes a variety of contaminants to coastal oceans and inland waterways, affecting their water quality [1][2][3]. These contaminants come from different residential, commercial, and industrial land uses within a watershed [4,5].…”

“…Several physical mechanisms control the stormwater quality in critical source areas including pollutant buildup and washoff [3,9]. Contaminants will accumulate on parking lots over time from vehicle traffic and from the continual deposition of atmospheric contaminants.…”

Experimental study on filtration effect and mechanism of pavement runoff in permeable asphalt pavement

“…Once these pollutants infiltrate into subgrade, they may cause groundwater contamination. Since it is difficult to restore water quality after groundwater contamination, domestic water and ecological environment will be severely affected [1,[9][10][11][12]. Therefore, the quality of the water permeating into the subgrade needs to be carefully assessed, especially for the road sections with heavy traffic and potentially high concentrations of pollutants (e.g.…”

Potencialidade dos pavimentos permeáveis na melhoria da qualidade da água do escoamento superficial: uma revisão

“…O escoamento superficial realiza o transporte de poluentes presentes sobre pavimentos e calçadas, sendo sua poluição identificada como uma das causas mais relevantes da degradação da qualidade das águas receptoras (Barrett et al, 1998;Revitt et al, 2014).…”