Engineering Design Procedures and Standard Drawings for Highway Construction Sediment Basins

Sediment basins with outlet orifice skimmers are one of forty erosion prevention and sediment control (EPSC) devices that the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) utilizes to meet regulatory runoff quality permitting requirements at their highway construction sites. Regulations set in place by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) require performance standards that often affect TDOT’s existing design criteria for stormwater control measures (SCM). TDOT needed to update their manual’s engineering design criteria for sediment basins based on new regulations and modeling/monitoring datasets including field verification. The goal of this project is to initiate a performance analysis of current TDOT design criteria for sediment basins, basing the basin sizes on Chapter X of TDOT’s Drainage Manual and the 2013 TDOT Report Engineering Design Guidance for Highway Construction Sediment Basins by Neff and Schwartz. In the 2013 TDOT Report basin sizes were a developed using hydrology and sediment models on three key criteria; they were drainage area size, slope, and soil type. Following the modeling effort, this study monitored the influent and effluent of two separate highway sites with varying catchment slopes, soil types, and drainage areas. The sites were located on US64 in Morgan County and I-640 in Knox County. The monitoring devices used at each site were chosen for the topographic constraints, and included ISCO samplers and/or Pinson weir buckets. Per each site, the following monitoring data were collected for six and five collection rainfall events: inlet and outlet water samples, flume sediment deposits, weather data, and volumetric flow data. The site field data were analyzed to assess basin performance and characterize particle size variability.

• Record URL:
  https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tdot/documents/RES2016-17.pdf
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Cannot yet update with final report.

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $97,003.00
• Contract Numbers:

  RES2016-17

  IG1647821

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Tennessee Department of Transportation

  James K. Polk Building
  Fifth and Deaderick Street
  Nashville, TN  United States  37243-0349

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Tennessee Department of Transportation

  James K. Polk Building
  Fifth and Deaderick Street
  Nashville, TN  United States  37243-0349
• Project Managers:

  Hangul, Ali

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Tennessee, Knoxville

  Knoxville, TN  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Schwartz, John

  Smith, Payton

• Start Date: 20151001
• Expected Completion Date: 20190331
• Actual Completion Date: 20190531
• USDOT Program: Transportation, Planning, Research, and Development

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Design engineering; Drainage basins; Drawings; Runoff; Sedimentation
• Subject Areas: Environment; Maintenance and Preservation; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01710348
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Tennessee Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: RES2016-17, IG1647821
• Files: RiP
• Created Date: Jun 21 2019 12:01PM