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Urban total phosphorus loads to the St. Clair-Detroit River System

Yao Hu,C. Long,Yu-Chen Wang,B. Kerkez,D. Scavia

Published 2019 in Journal of Great Lakes Research

ABSTRACT

Abstract The St. Clair-Detroit River System watershed is a large, binational watershed draining into the connecting channel between lakes Huron and Erie. In addition to extensive agricultural lands, it contains large urban areas that discharge phosphorus from point source facilities, runoff of impervious surfaces, and overflows of combined sewers. To help guide actions to reduce phosphorus input to Lake Erie, we analyzed the spatial and temporal dynamics of loads from the three largest urban areas in the watershed (southeast Michigan; Windsor, Ontario; and London, Ontario), and used a previously calibrated storm water management model (SWMM) to explore options for reducing loads around metro Detroit. Point sources in these three urban areas contribute, on average, 81% of the total urban load and 19% of the Detroit River’s total phosphorus (TP) load to Lake Erie, while combined sewer overflows and runoff both contribute about 10% each to the urban load and about 2.5% each to the Detroit River’s load to Lake Erie. Most of the urban load (56%) comes from a single point source, the wastewater treatment facility in Detroit; however, TP loads from that facility have decreased by about 51% since 2008 due to improvements in wastewater treatment. Model simulations suggest that increasing pervious land area or implementing green infrastructure could help reduce combined sewer overflows in certain upper portions of the metro Detroit sewer system, but reductions were much less expressed for wet-weather discharge from the system.

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