Case Study

Minimising the environmental impact of pollution from rain water runoff

The UK water industry published a code of practice for assessing surface water treatment technologies. The document is supported by the Environment Agency and manufacturers of surface water treatment devices. The document is necessary to demonstrate how well proprietary devices used in sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) treat run-off and remove heavy metals from the water cycle. This code of practice defines the process necessary to measure the pollutant capture and retention capability of any device entering the UK market.

The voluntary code of practice allows professionals delivering SuDS to apply a risk-based approach to minimising the environmental impact of the diffuse pollution from runoff. Verifying the capture and retention capabilities of different devices for a range of pollutants gives regulators, designers, specifiers and local authorities the information they need to select the most appropriate technology in a given application.

Approval and certification under the Code of Practice: Assessment of Manufactured Devices Designed to Treat Surface Water Runoff will allow manufacturers to demonstrate that their published capture and retention capabilities have been tested. The document can be accessed here.