Addressing Stormwater & Wastewater with Sustainable Membrane Technology

By Greg Baird

Population growth and the development of urban/urbanized areas are major contributors to the amount of pollutants in storm runoff as well as the volume and rate of runoff from impervious surfaces. Sewer discharge in runoff threatens our public health. Together, they can cause changes in hydrology and water quality that result in habitat modification and loss, increased flooding, decreased aquatic biological diversity, and increased sedimentation and erosion.

Urbanization from population growth with land use change and development sprawl has created an average increase of an additional 55 percent of runoff. This is coupled with a complex mix of infrastructure assets including more than 850,000 miles of public sewers, 500,000 miles of private lateral sewers, more than 16,000 wastewater treatment plants, an estimated 3.5 million miles of storm sewers, 270 million storm drains and 2.5 million stormwater treatment assets across the United States.