Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination in Storm Drains Manual - Part 1 - a PDH Online Course for Engineers, Architects and Surveyors

Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination in Storm Drains Manual - Part 1

Course Outline

This five-hour online course incorporates the experience of more than 20 Phase I communities that were surveyed about their practices, levels of program effort, and lessons learned. These communities took many different approaches to solve the IDDE problem, provided great insights on common obstacles, and set realistic expectations. The course summarizes this information to help 1) Deﬁne important terminology and understand key illicit discharge concepts; 2) Conduct an audit to understand community needs and capabilities; 3) Establish adequate legal authority; 4) Develop a tracking system to map outfalls and document reported illicit discharges; 5) Conduct desktop analyses to prioritize targets for illicit discharge control; 6) Conduct rapid reconnaissance of the stream corridor to ﬁnd problem outfalls; 7) Apply new analytical and ﬁeld methods to ﬁnd and ﬁx illicit discharges; 8) Educate municipal employees and the public to prevent discharges; and 10) Estimate costs to run a program and conduct speciﬁc investigations

This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to enhance the understanding of the course materials.

Learning Objective

This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:

Basics of illicit discharges;
Components of an effective IDDE program;
Auditing existing resources and programs;
Establishing responsibility and legal authority;
Developing program goals and implementation strategies;
Searching for illicit discharge problems in the field;
Isolating and fixing individual illicit discharges;
Preventing illicit discharges; and
IDDE program tracking and evaluation.

Intended Audience

This course is intended primarily for civil, environmental, and hydraulic engineers concerned with storm water management.

Benefit to Attendees

A person completing this course will be familiar with and able to apply procedures for planning and implementing an IDDE program.

Course Introduction

Studies have shown that dry weather ﬂows from the storm drain system may contribute a larger annual discharge mass for some pollutants than wet weather storm water ﬂows. Detecting and eliminating these illicit discharges involves complex detective work, which makes it hard to establish a rigid prescription to “hunt down” and correct all illicit connections. Frequently, there is no single approach to take, but rather a variety of ways to get from detection to elimination.

Course Content

This course is based on Chapters 1-10 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency document, “Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination, A Guidance Manual for Program Development and Technical Assessments” by E. Brown, D. Caraco, and R. Pitt, October, 2004. The Technical Appendices from the manual are included as reference material.

Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination in Storm Drains Manual - Part 1

Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination in Storm Drains Manual - Technical Appendices

Please click on the above underlined hypertext to view, download or print the document for your study. Because of the large file size, we recommend that you first save the file to your computer by right clicking the mouse and choosing "Save Target As ...", and then open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you still experience any difficulty in downloading or opening this file, you may need to close some applications or reboot your computer to free up some memory.

Course Summary

Designed with a broad audience in mind, including agency heads, program managers, ﬁeld technicians and water quality analysts, this course provides Phase II communities with guidance for the development and implementation of their own programs. The course addresses the broad range of administrative and technical considerations involved with setting up an effective IDDE program.

Related Links

For additional technical information related to this subject, please visit the following websites or web pages:

http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/swfinal.cfm

Quiz

Once you finish studying the above course content, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.

DISCLAIMER: The materials contained in the online course are not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of PDH Center or any other person/organization named herein. The materials are for general information only. They are not a substitute for competent professional advice. Application of this information to a specific project should be reviewed by a registered architect and/or professional engineer/surveyor. Anyone making use of the information set forth herein does so at their own risk and assumes any and all resulting liability arising therefrom.