Effectiveness Analysis of Systematic Combined Sewer Overflow Control Schemes in the Sponge City Pilot Area of Beijing

Combined sewer overflow (CSO) pollution poses a serious threat to the urban water environment and is more severe in old urban areas. This research uses the old urban area in the sponge city pilot area in Tongzhou District, Beijing, as the study area. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) storm water management model (SWMM) was used to establish the hydrologic and hydraulic model of this area. The model parameters were calibrated and validated based on the measured rainfall and runoff data. The results show that the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient for calibration and validation is more than 0.74. Thirty-two sets of systematic CSO control schemes are formulated, which include the gray (includes the pipes, pumps, ditches, and detention ponds engineered by people to manage stormwater) strategy and gray-green strategies, and the regularity of CSO control for low impact development (LID) facilities at the source, intercepting sewer pipes at the midway, and storage tank at the end, are quantitatively analyzed. The results show that the LID facility has an average annual reduction rate of 22% for the CSO frequency and 35% to 49% for the CSO volume. The retrofitting of intercepting sewer pipes has an average annual reduction rate of 11% for the CSO frequency and 4% to 15% for the CSO volume, and the storage tank has an average annual reduction rate from 3% to 36% for the CSO volume; furthermore, the reduction rate decreases with the increase in the CSO volume reduction rate by LID facilities. When the CSO control target is stricter, the control effect of the end segment is more obvious, but the control efficiency is lower. By studying the variability of the storage tank volume under different control targets, it can be concluded that it is reasonable to set the CSO control target because the number of overflow events does not exceed four times per year for the study area.