Water quality monitoring of catch basins

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of four catch basins in the removal of stormwater contaminants for fifteen storm events in the District of Colombia. The four catch basins in this study were: Hydrodynamic, Regular, Filter and Vortex catch basins. By trapping sediments, catch basins remove some pollutants before discharging the stormwater into the river (US EPA, 1997).;Two parameters of major importance in this study were; total suspended solids (TSS) and chemical oxygen demand (COD). Results indicated that the Filter catch basin had the highest TSS removal efficiency of 94 +/- 4, which occurred from December 2007 through March 2008. The Vortex catch basin had higher removal efficiency of 72 +/- 18 than the Filter and Regular catch basins, whose removal efficiencies were 63 +/- 40 and 33 +/- 21 respectively during the same period.;In the case of the COD, the Hydrodynamic catch basin showed the highest % removal efficiency of 46 +/- 0, which occurred from April to July 2008. During that same period, the Regular catch basin had higher COD % removal of 15 +/- 0, than the Filter and Vortex catch basins whose % removals were 1.0 +/- 0 and -1.0 +/- 16 respectively.