UP 503: Site and Physical Planning

6d. Site Engineering: Stormwater

This module covers engineering approaches. Time will be spent on reading and understanding key concepts and working on assignments in which you will apply engineering concepts to the area you have chosen.

Site engineering includes activities such as setting up stormwater and wastewater handling systems, roads and traffic systems, and site grading and flood protection systems. Site engineering seeks to facilitate human activities on the site and also to help mitigate limitations imposed on such activities by characteristics of natural systems in place.

For this assignment we will limit ourselves to the topics of stormwater and sewerage. The goal is to understand what principles lead to good engineering practices, which do not, and why. Various readings are provided below to help develop this understanding.

• Stormwater Handling Systems
  • Strom, Steven, and Kurt Nathan, 1993, Site Engineering for Landscape Architects, 2nd Ed., Van Nostrand Reinhold. pp. 85-99
  • Dreher, Dennis, and Thomas Price, 1997, Reducing the Impacts of Urban Runoff, Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, April 1997. pp. 1-6, 51-57
  • Advanced: Clar, Michael, and Billy Barfield. 2004. Stormwater Best Management Practice Design Guide (Volume 3): Basin Best Management Practices. USEPA
• Sewerage Systems
  • Andersen, Chapter 5
• Green Engineering
  • EPA 'Constructed Wetlands'

Assignment

To help ground these ideas in a concrete situation, you will work out in rough terms the engineering required for implementing a design proposal on your selected area. While this is not an assignment that a planner would typically be given, it is implicit in a planner's review of a preliminary plat. Engineers in a city's public works department will review construction drawings associated with a final plat and check that the proposed site engineering meets standards, but there is typically not such an intervention at the stage when a planner is reviewing a preliminary plat. Instead, the planner will have to assess roughly that the plat can be implemented.

Your work is not expected to be detailed in the manner of construction drawings. Rather, a minimum amount of information is to be provided as described below:

For purposes of further analysis, limit the selected region to between 0.5 to 1.5 sq. miles in area.

• Green Stormwater Engineering
  • Design an overland storm water system on your site
  • Use green infrastructure plan
  • Assess contours (no mapping of contours required)
  • Use what you learned about designing detention/retention areas
  • Base the size needed on hydrograph and work on alternative approaches
  • Assign percentage reduction to designed detention from previous assignment
  • Assess the viability of an overland constructed wetland wastewater system on your area

2 Maps required along with memo-

• Stormwater:
  • A map showing location, area, and depth of retention or detention ponds needed to ensure that the site does not generate more runoff than it would in its natural state. Refer to the Hydro model for this purpose.
• Sanitary sewer:
  • A map showing where sewers may be connected to city system and potential placement of an overland sewage treatment facility for your site.

Rather than work directly on the screen, I suggest you print out a map containing base information, work on it, and transfer your ideas to Illustrator when you have worked out a proposal.

Combine maps and a narrative that summarizes key concerns about the proposal from the point of view of site engineering. Use the same page format you used in the Natural Systems analysis.

These documents are to be completed and submitted to the assignment dropbox folder in a single PDF file following the format 6d_LastName_NetID.pdf by 1:59pm on the following lab Thursday as described in the schedule.

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