Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers Transport 158 August 2005 Issue TR3 Pages 137138 Paper 14107

Keywords: pollution/reviews/roads & highways

Brieng: Review of CIRIA Report 142 on highway pollutants

Junaid A. Patel, Atkins, UK
Pollutants build up on highways and are washed off during a rainfall event and are usually discharged via an outfall to a watercourse. CIRIA report 142 (1994) guidance indicates that pollutant build-up on highways is a linear process which is proportional to trafc ow and time. This guidance has since been adopted in the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. However, recent studies suggest that these assumptions may not be ideal. This article explores the pollutant build-up and runoff mechanisms on highways and suggests possible alternative assumptions which may be implemented to enhance the original CIRIA methodology. 1. SOURCES OF POLLUTANT BUILD-UP Vehicles have been cited as the major contributors to chronic highway pollutant build-up in non-urban areas. Tyre, brake and engine wear are a source of zinc, cadmium, iron, chromium, copper and aluminium. Engine leakage (and uncombusted fuel) is the major source of hydrocarbons. Highway installations such as safety barriers have also been cited as a source of pollutants in highway runoff. Atmospheric deposition can contribute a signicant amount to the pollutant load on highways; this can occur as dust falls during dry periods. This type of deposition has been shown to have a strong seasonal and industry-related component. A number of highway maintenance practices also contribute to the pollutant load in highway runoff. De-icing salt is predominantly sodium chloride; however, this usually has associated chemicals including iron, nickel, lead, zinc, chromium and cyanide. Vegetation control on road-side verges contributes to organic loading and other more dangerous pollutants if herbicides have been used. Construction works on highways are generally associated with the production of dissolved and particulate solids. In addition the use of heavy plant can introduce hydrocarbons in highway runoff. It should be noted that temporally these pollutant build-up mechanisms can be chronic, acute and seasonal. 2. FACTORS AFFECTING POLLUTANT BUILD-UP Conventionally pollutant loading has been thought to be exclusively related to trafc ow. Several authors have since reported ndings which show weak or insignicant correlation between trafc ow and pollutant build-up. Recently Kayhanian et al.1 in a comprehensive four-year study based in California have unequivocally concluded that No simple linear relationship exists between highway runoff pollutants. . .and Transport 158 Issue TR3 AADT (annual average daily trafc), including determinands which are known to be associated with vehicle deposition. Local land use (including industry), seasonal variations, road surface material, embankments and cuttings have all been identied as important factors in inuencing pollutant buildup. This has led to a categorisation of sites under investigation according to these factors in a number of studies. 3. RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1. Pollutant loading relationship with trafc ow CIRIA report 1422 identies trafc ow as the major factor in pollutant loading build-up by directly relating trafc ow to pollutant build-up rates, the effect of which is capped for trafc ows greater than 30 000 vehicles per day (annual average). The relationship between trafc ow and pollutant loading is at most a tenuous one. If pollutant loading rates are dependent on a number of unrelated factors then a method is required to account for these different factors. Multiple linear regression models have been suggested 3 to understand the factors which inuence pollutant build-up. This method allows the identication of a number of casual variables which can affect pollutant build-up. Another approach would be to consider land use categories which have been shown to be major factor in pollutant build-up; again these could be integrated with trafc ow data or more radically trafc ow could be neglected altogether. If these approaches appear too great a departure from the CIRIA methodology then a more subtle approach could be implemented by introducing a background value which accounts for other non-trafc ow-related factors. 3.2. Pollutant build-up temporal variation The CIRIA guidance indicates a linear build-up of pollutants on highways with time, by implementing pollutant loading rates (kg/ha per year). This offers a simple and effective way of understanding the temporal build-up of pollutants. However, this assumption leads to the fact that as the antecedent dry period increases so does the pollutant build-up, linearly and indenitely. A number of models have therefore been proposed which account for the removal of pollutants by processes other than rainfall (e.g. wind). The implementation of such models have two key results.4 Patel 137

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(a) Pollutant build up is limited on roads because of removal processes other than rainfall (referred to as loading capacity). (b) Varying the antecedent dry period can have a completely different impact on pollutant load compared with the linear build-up model assumed in CIRIA 142.2 3.3. Rainfall depth CIRIA report 1422 indicates that the use of the Wallingford Procedure, 5 which considers the 1 year 24 h storm in order to determine the site-specic rainfall. This in turn is used in a mass balance calculation to calculate the water quality downstream of a highway outfall. The values of rainfall obtained from the Wallingford Procedure are relatively large in comparison with the minimum rainfall required for pollutant wash off; and may not represent the worse case (least dilution) scenario. For a simple assessment the use of a single value of minimum rainfall required for pollutant wash off may be advantageous in order to develop the worse case scenario. Such a value would represent the depth which exceeds the road inltration capacity to produce runoff and wash off the pollutants. This value has been shown to be in the range of 0.12.2 mm.68 Values of inltration capacity suggest that much smaller values of rainfall than those provided by the Wallingford Procedure could be implemented to represent the worse case (least dilution) scenario. 4. SUMMARY The issue of pollutant loading and runoff from roads is increasingly becoming an important issue since the adoption of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). 9 Currently trafc ows exceed 70 000 vehicles per day on UK highways with ows greater than 100 000 the norm for major motorways. 10 The effect of such high trafc ow on pollutant loading is unquantied. Given that there are thought to be more than 12 000 outfalls on the motorway network (Fig. 1), a need therefore clearly exists to re-evaluate pollutant loading and its effects in the UK.

REFERENCES 1. KAYHANIAN M., SINGH A., SUVERKROPP C. and BORROUM S. Impact of annual average daily trafc on highway runoff pollutant concentrations. Journal of Environmental Engineering 2003, 129, No. 11, 975. 2. CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY RESEARCH AND INFORMATION ASSOCIATION. Control of Pollution from Highway Drainage Discharges. CIRIA, London, Report 142, 1994. 3. IRISH B.L., JR, BARRET M. E., MALINA J. F., JR and CHARBENEAU R. J. Use of regression models for analysing highway storm-water loads. Journal of Environmental Engineering, 1998, 124, No. 10, 987993. 4. YUAN Y., HALL K. and OLDHAM C. A preliminary model for predicting heavy metal contaminant loading form an urban catchment. The Science of the Total Environment, 2001, 266, Nos 13, 299307. 5. DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT. Wallingford Procedure for Design and Analysis of Urban Storm Drainage, Standing Technical Committee Reports. National Water Council, London, 1981. 6. SANSALONE J. J., BUCHBERGER S. G. and AL-ABED S. R. fractionation of heavy metals in pavement runoff. Science of the Total Environment, 1996, 189/190, 371378. 7. ELLIS J. B., HARROP D. O. and REVITT D. M. Hydrological controls of pollutant removal from highway surfaces. Water Research, 1986, 20, No. 5, 589595. 8. HARRISON R. M. and WILSON S. J. The chemical composition of highway drainage water. Science of the Total Environment, 1985, 43, Nos 12, 6377. 9. EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT and COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION. Directive 2000/60/EEC of the European Parliment and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for community action in the eld of water policy. Ofcial Journal of the European Communities, 2000, L327/1. 10. DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT. Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2003 Edition. DfT, London, 2004. FURTHER READING HIGHWAYS AGENCY. Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (1993, Amended 1998) 11.3.10: Water Quality and Drainage. Highways Agency, Department of Transport, London. GLENDINNING S. and JAIN A. Environmental assessment of highways schemes- a review of DMRB Volume 11. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Transport, 1998, 129, No. 3, 162163. DRAPPER D., TOMLINSON R. and WILLIAMS P. Pollutant concentrations in road runoff: Southeast Queensland case study. Journal of Environmental Engineering, 2000, 126, No. 4, 313320. PATEL J. A. and DRIEU O. Expanding CIRIA Report142 methodology for additional determinands. Water and Environmental Journal, 2005, in press.

Fig. 1. A highway outfall discharging to a watercourse

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