Alternative Practices for Highway Stormwater Management

The four-part Alternative Practices for Highway Stormwater Management Webcast series outlines the latest techniques available to help transportation agencies save money, comply with water quality and water supply regulations, and improve water quality with context-sensitive stormwater management practices, including low impact development techniques. These techniques also can help highway department personnel manage stormwater quantity and quality while using existing rights of way and providing easy access for maintenance crews. Each session includes valuable background information and specific guidance on how to apply these principles for highway projects. The series also addresses barriers to using innovative stormwater management techniques and how to overcome those barriers. This series provides valuable information to design engineers, planners, regulators, students, maintenance supervisors, construction engineers, and consultants.

• Archives of all 4 programs.
• Resources for all 4 programs.
• Introduction to Alternative Practices to Manage Highway Runoff (May 18, 2006): This session explores alternative practices to manage highway runoff using low impact development (LID) principals. LID refers to a toolbox of techniques, some of which provide excellent stormwater management options at low life-cycle cost for highways. LID in a highway environment means managing stormwater safely and cost-effectively to reproduce predevelopment hydrology while using methods that are appropriate to and fit within existing streetscapes and landscapes. Learn more about the benefits of these techniques and transportation projects that have used them successfully.
• Planning Highway Projects Using Alternative Practices for Stormwater Management (June 15, 2006): Everyone involved in planning and scoping highway projects will learn about the benefits of watershed-scale planning in the highway environment. The session includes factors to consider in watershed-scale planning and how to save costs over the life-cycle of projects by planning projects in ways that allow design engineers to take advantage of existing stormwater management properties of the landscape.
• Alternative Practices for Highway Stormwater Management: Design, Construction and Maintenance – Part One (October 26, 2006): Three stormwater management case studies are presented in depth. Design criteria, specifications, lessons learned, and research results are provided for bioretention and grass swales.
• Alternative Practices for Highway Stormwater Management: Design, Construction and Maintenance - Part Two (December 7, 2006):
  Three additional stormwater management case studies are presented in depth. Design criteria, specifications, lessons learned, and research results are provided for compost amended vegetated filter strips, porous asphalt overlays, and bio-swales.

This on-line training series is made possible with support from the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Center for Transportation and the Environment.