Performance of Grass Swales for Controlling Pollution of Roadway Runoff in Field Experiments

Two different styles of grass swales were built in new Binhu region of Hefei city to monitor the flux and quality of the influent and effluent water under actual precipitation conditions, in order to evaluate the performance of water quality purification and pollution load control for roadway runoff. The results showed that both of the grass swales could effectively remove the pollutants such as TSS, COD, Pb, Cu, Cd, Zn in roadway runoff; the median EMC removal efficiencies of TSS and COD were 67.1%, 46.7% respectively,for facility I, and the median EMC removal efficiencies of TSS and COD were 78.6%, 58.6% respectively, for facility II; the concentrations of Pb, Cu, Zn in the effluent of facility II could meet the requirements of the surface water quality class V; release of nitrogen and phosphorus occurred in both facilities I and I[ in several rainfall events, mainly in heavy storms; the removal efficiencies of TP in the two grass swales were improved with the increase of influent concentration; the mean removal efficiencies of TP in facilities I and II were 14.7% and 45.4%, respectively; the load control performance of facility II for pollutants such as TSS, COD, TP, TN, NH4+ -N and NO3- -N was better than that of facility I; in the district with poor soil permeability and low ground slope, application of dry swale could achieve better performance in water quality control and pollution load reduction of roadway runoff.