Constructed wetlands for improving stormwater quality and health of urban lakes

Abstract Urban lakes and wetlands are being more commonly used for the purpose of storing and treating stormwater. In some instances, a combination of both constructed wetlands and lakes are designed to further improve the efficiency of the system. The main aim of this paper is to compare the water quality between two urban stormwater lakes. A standalone lake system and a combined wetland/lake system were monitored for water quality. The results indicate that an integrated wetland and urban lake performs better than the urban lake alone. The improved performance was particularly significant in terms of physical parameters such as turbidity, suspended solids, total solids (TS) and nutrients (particularly nitrogen). The significance of the wetland in the integrated system is highlighted as it helped, on an average, to reduce the concentration of TS, ammonium and phosphate by 50%, 62% and 53%, respectively.