Park Place Stormwater Facility Chapter 4: Monitoring

By bitsadmin

With the construction of the Park Place Stormwater facility largely completed, the City of Bellingham has tasked Herrera with monitoring the facility’s pollutant reduction performance starting in Fall 2022. Herrera will deploy automated samplers, flow sensors, a rain gauge, telemetry, and an intelligent logging and control system to accurately assess the water quantity and quality at both the inlet and outlet of the facility. 

TAPE monitoring will follow a rigorous protocol to ensure data meets the highest standards. The collected data will be used to verify performance of the facility and to document the removal of phosphorus as part of the City’s obligations under the Lake Whatcom Watershed Total Phosphorus and Bacteria (TMDL) plan. The monitoring will also support adaptive management decisions such as adjusting the duration and frequency of cell dosing and recovery in the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) based control system.

Herrera designed the control system to allow operation in both “planted” and “unplanted” modes, so influent stormwater will only be dosed to the planted cells, or the unplanted cells based on operator preference. This allows the team to study the benefit of planted media for phosphorus removal. 

Learning as we design and improving with every project remains one of Herrera’s core tenets. The Park Place Stormwater Facility embodies this ethos while delivering value for the City and all Lake Whatcom residents.

This concludes Herrera’s Park Place blog series! For more information on this project, please contact Dylan Ahearn, PhD or Chris Webb, PE.

Click here to read more: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

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Bellingham, Construction, GSI, Projects, Stormwater, Uncategorized, Washington, Water, Water Quality