Introduction to Stormwater

by Bruce K. Ferguson, 1998. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York. Hardcover, 260 pages, $59.95

Stormwater management is a vitally important component of almost any green building project (see EBN Vol. 3, No. 5). Environmentally responsible stormwater management can even be an economic driver of a broader green building agenda: using the savings achieved by finding alternatives to conventional storm sewers and detention ponds to pay for other green features in a large project. Given the importance of stormwater, it is surprising that there are so few information resources that are written to be accessible to the typical architect, builder, or developer. With Ferguson’s Introduction to Stormwater, we finally have such a resource. The book is reasonably comprehensive, yet you don’t need an engineering degree to understand it. Plus, there is a strong emphasis on the many environmental benefits of thoughtful stormwater management —which is not surprising, as Ferguson studied landscape architecture under Ian McHarg in the 1970s.

Introduction to Stormwater addresses hydrologic concepts, the water balance, methods for calculating stormwater runoff, and the primary components of stormwater management: conveyance, detention, extended detention (sometimes called “retention”—a term Ferguson avoids due to its ambiguity), and infiltration. In any stormwater management design, providing for infiltration is the optimal primary control strategy in almost all circumstances (see also our review of Ferguson’s more technical book, Stormwater Infiltration, in EBN Vol. 4, No. 4). Lots of good information is presented on pollutant removal through stormwater infiltration and using constructed wetland detention systems. There is even a section on water harvesting as a strategy for stormwater control. Throughout the book, Ferguson clearly describes the benefits of integrated solutions to stormwater management—such as the incorporation of stormwater control features into a landscaping strategy to serve multiple uses. He also emphasizes pollution control benefits very clearly.

Introduction to Stormwater includes lots of exercises to familiarize more technically inclined users with methods of calculating stormwater volumes and capacities of stormwater conveyance, detention, and infiltration systems. These exercises will help solidify the reader’s understanding of stormwater principles, but many will not need this level of depth. For architects and builders who need to know only enough about stormwater to specify and oversee stormwater engineering, it should suffice to focus on the primary text and skip the quantitative exercises. For anyone actually needing to design those systems, the exercises will prove useful, but more in-depth training may also be necessary.