Using Stormwater in a Sponge City as a New Wing of Urban Water Supply—A Case Study

Rapid and even disruptive innovations are needed to make cities fit for the future. The particular challenge will be to transform existing urban spaces in order to increase climate resilience. Along these lines, rainwater harvesting has taken place insufficiently to date, even when Sponge City concepts are implemented. Thus, the concept presented here addresses existing urban neighborhoods and proposes to collect rainwater from nearby rooftops and treat it in decentral treatment units called “City Water Hubs” (CWH) equipped with modular coupled low-energy technologies to produce various customized “City Water” qualities, and store it until it can be used or distributed. A feasibility study with a focus on the campus area at the main building of the Leibniz University of Hannover, the determined rainwater qualities, and the results from investigations with two laboratory test plants provided the basis for the technical design of the pursued concept. The feasibility study showed how sufficient rainwater for irrigation purposes can be made available for the listed large university park even under extreme dry and heat wave conditions. If large portions of the roof area (11,737 m2) of the university’s main building were activated, even in a dry year with only 49.8% of the average precipitation, only 19.8% of the harvested stormwater would be needed for irrigation. The rainwater samples showed TSS concentrations of up to 7.54 mg/L, COD of up to 58.5 mg/L, and NH4 of up to 2.21 mg/L, which was in line with data reported in the literature. The treatment technologies used for the two pilot plants are proven approaches for stormwater treatment and were composed as follows: (1) gravity-driven membrane filtration (GDM) and (2) slow sand filter with integrated activated carbon (AC) layer. The treatment with both (1) and (2) clearly improved the rainwater quality. The GDM reduced turbidity by 90.4% and the Sand/AC filter by 20.4%. With regard to COD, the studies for GDM did not show a clear elimination trend; the Sand/AC filter reduced the COD by 77%. Taken together, decentralized low-energy rainwater treatment can reliably provide quality-assured City Water for any specific use. Regarding the treatment design, GDM is preferable and can be better operated with downstream UV disinfection, which might be needed to reduce the pathogenic load, e.g., for local heat control measures. The research steps presented here will pioneer the development of a city-wide rainwater harvesting infrastructure on the way of establishing stormwater as a resource for a new wing of urban water supply. The presented findings will now result in the implementation of a full-scale CHW on the campus to ensure long-term irrigation of the listed park, relieving the public drinking water supply

Anticoagulant Rodenticides on our Public and Community Lands: Spatial Distribution of Exposure and Poisoning of a Rare Forest Carnivore

Anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) poisoning has emerged as a significant concern for conservation and management of non-target wildlife. The purpose for these toxicants is to suppress pest populations in agricultural or urban settings. The potential of direct and indirect exposures and illicit use of ARs on public and community forest lands have recently raised concern for fishers (Martes pennanti), a candidate for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act in the Pacific states. In an investigation of threats to fisher population persistence in the two isolated California populations, we investigate the magnitude of this previously undocumented threat to fishers, we tested 58 carcasses for the presence and quantification of ARs, conducted spatial analysis of exposed fishers in an effort to identify potential point sources of AR, and identified fishers that died directly due to AR poisoning. We found 46 of 58 (79%) fishers exposed to an AR with 96% of those individuals having been exposed to one or more second-generation AR compounds. No spatial clustering of AR exposure was detected and the spatial distribution of exposure suggests that AR contamination is widespread within the fisher’s range in California, which encompasses mostly public forest and park lands Additionally, we diagnosed four fisher deaths, including a lactating female, that were directly attributed to AR toxicosis and documented the first neonatal or milk transfer of an AR to an altricial fisher kit. These ARs, which some are acutely toxic, pose both a direct mortality or fitness risk to fishers, and a significant indirect risk to these isolated populations. Future research should be directed towards investigating risks to prey populations fishers are dependent on, exposure in other rare forest carnivores, and potential AR point sources such as illegal marijuana cultivation in the range of fishers on California public lands