Effectiveness of Rainwater Harvesting in Runoff Volume Reduction in a Planned Industrial Park, China

It is urgent to effectively mitigate flood disasters in humid mountainous areas in southeastern China for the increasing flood risk under urbanization and industrialization. In this study, a rural district with an area of 13.39 km2 that planning to build an industrial park covering an area of 7.98 km2 in Changting was selected to estimate the potential of collectable rainwater and the extent to which runoff volume can potentially be mitigated by rainwater harvesting. In addition, the optimum cistern capacity of a rainwater harvesting system in the planned industrial park was evaluated using daily water balance simulation and cost-efficiency analysis. The results showed that rainwater harvesting in the planned industrial park has great potential. The annually collectable rainwater is approximately 9.8 × 106 m3 and the optimum cistern capacity is determined to be 0.9 × 106 m3. With the optimum cistern capacity, the annual rainwater usage rate is 0.99, showing neither financial savings nor deficits. Rainwater harvesting can reduce 100 % of runoff volume in the cases of critical rainfall storm (50 mm) and annual average maximum daily rainfall (111.2 mm), and 58 % of runoff volume in the case of maximum daily rainfall (233.6 mm), respectively. All surface runoff can be collected and stored in the cisterns when rainfall amount is less than 135.5 mm in a rainstorm event.