Coupling urban event-based and catchment continuous modelling for combined sewer overflow river impact assessment

Abstract

Abstract. Since the Water Framework Directive (WFD) was passed in year 2000, the protection of water bodies in the EU must be understood in a completely different way. Regarding to combined sewer overflows (CSOs) from urban drainage networks, the WFD implies that CSOs cannot be accepted because of their intrinsic features, but must be assessed for their impact on the receiving water bodies in agreement with specific environmental aims. Consequently, both, the urban system and the receiving one must be jointly analysed to evaluate their impact. In this context, a coupled scheme is presented in this paper to assess the CSOs impact in a river system in Torrelavega (Spain). First, an urban model is developed to characterise statistically the CSOs frequency, volume and duration. The main feature of this first model is the fact of being event-based: the system is modelled with some built synthetic storms which cover adequately the probability range of the main rainfall descriptors, i.e., rainfall event volume and peak intensity. Thus, CSOs are characterised in terms of their occurrence probability. Secondly, a continuous and distributed basin model is built to assess the river response at different points in the river network. This model was calibrated initially on a daily scale and downscaled later to the hourly scale. The main objective of this second element of the scheme is to provide the most likely state of the receiving river when a CSO occurs. By combining results of both models, CSO and river flows are homogeneously characterised from a statistical point of view. Finally, results from both models were coupled to estimate the final concentration of some analysed pollutants (the biochemical oxygen demand, BOD, and the total ammonium, NH4+), in the river just after the spills.