Grant: Alliance Grants

Stormwater infrastructure management, one of the most important tasks of the municipalities, involves managing the stormwater runoff quantity and quality by controlling flooding, reducing the pollutant loadings, and ensuring public safety. Stormwater management under climate change conditions has become even more challenging. Under the City of Windsor's (City's) Final Agreement for Consolidated Linear Infrastructure Environmental Compliance Approval (Final CLI ECA Agreement), the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) mandates water balance (WB) requirements for new developments and retrofit scenarios in already developed areas. MECP requires municipalities to manage stormwater runoff volume through WB control measures, to match pre-development conditions or to the 90th percentile storm event through the use of Low Impact Development (LID) controls, such as infiltration trenches, permeable pavement, rain gardens, and bioretention cells. In the case of Windsor, the 90th percentile storm event is equal to 30 mm of rainfall. However, it is not clear if the City could retain 30 mm of the rainfall given the prevailing clay soils. The objective of the present partnership between the City and the University of Windsor is to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of Low Impact Development (LID) controls in managing stormwater in Windsor's low permeable clay soils which pose challenges. If it is not possible to retain 30 mm of rainfall, the secondary objective is to determine the magnitude of the rainfall that can be retained in the sewershed. To decide the most suitable combinations of LID controls to manage urban stormwater sustainably, it is proposed carry out an integrated field investigations and modelling study. It is aimed to apply a coupled optimization-simulation model by linking the SWMM 5 model to the Borg Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm to identify the best possible combinations of LID controls in both public and private properties in an urban sewershed in Windsor, Ontario. The proposed study is very important for the City to develop the policy on LID implementation in Windsor to meet the MECP's CLI agreement.