Stormwater characterization and management in small urban catchments

This thesis is a preliminary study on how stormwater management should be improved also in small urban catchments and rural communities. The aim of the work is to improve knowledge and get new concepts on stormwater, in order to assess environmental risk by modeling and by proposing alternative ways to manage this phenomenon. This paper was written after another thesis on stormwater management, developed in the Master Degree in Environmental Engineering three years ago: the need to investigate on this topic was really crucial, so I decided to further deepen it in a Ph.D. program. In this case, a little basin of the High Friulian Plain was studied: in Friuli - Venezia Giulia Region, there is a huge number of little villages, each one with its own wastewater treatment plant and obviously with its own way to discharge stormwater in the environment. The selected village for the study was Galleriano di Lestizza, the place where I live, so it was my pleasure to understand stormwater fate and the implications of common design strategies of sewer systems. The results of the thesis could help to evaluate possible solutions to reduce first flush discharges and to control the total load of pollutant discharged into the infiltration pond at the end-of-pipe. This thesis opens a discussion on stormwater management in Friuli - Venezia Giulia Region: surface and groundwaters need to be protected from urban stormwater runoff, and this work allows to start a long and difficult path for an integrated water management and treatment protocol. The last hope of this work is to invite water regulators and water industries to focus on this topic, because they all must feel involved in the improvement of water resources and environmental habitats