Regional Stormwater Pond Water Quality Monitoring

The Maitland Downtown Stormwater Retrofit facility was constructed as an on-line wet detention pond and wetland along a historical drainage path to Lake Minnehaha in northern Orange County, Florida. Its purpose is to provide retrofit stormwater quality treatment. This facility receives inflow from the 120.8-acre Howell Creek drainage basin, a Lake Minnehaha sub-basin located along the western shore of Lake Minnehaha. The City of Maitland, Florida needed a professional environmental team to prepare a Water Quality Monitoring and Quality Assurance Project Plan on behalf of the City for submittal to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) as part of a grant.  The goal of the study was to evaluate pollutant removal efficiency by comparing the event mean concentrations (EMC) between inflow and outflow.

DRMP provided a detailed plan that outlined the methodology for conducting sampling of water quality parameters at the City's Regional Stormwater Pond, which discharges into Lake Minnehaha and is classified as an Impaired Waterbody. Once approved, DRMP’s ecologists and scientists collected flow, weighted composite samples over 10 storm events, analyzed the results and evaluated the effectiveness of the stormwater pond in removing pollutants from local drainage waters before reaching Lake Minnehaha.

DRMP’s plan gives the City much-needed information to determine the quality of water at the City’s Regional Stormwater Pond. This information will be used by the City to make future environmentally conscious decisions.