Distributions of typical contaminant species in urban short-term storm runoff and their fates during rain events: A case of Xiamen City

The pollutants in urban storm runoff, which lead to an non-point source contamination of water environment around cities, are of great concerns. The distributions of typical contaminants and the variations of their species in short term storm runoff from different land surfaces in Xiamen City were investigated. The concentrations of various contaminants, including organic matter, nutrients (i.e., N and P) and heavy metals, were significantly higher in parking lot and road runoff than those in roof and lawn runoff. The early runoff samples from traffic road and parking lot contained much high total nitrogen (TN 6–19 mg/L) and total phosphorus (TP 1–3 mg/L). A large proportion (around 60%) of TN existed as total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) species in most runoff. The percentage of TDN and the percentage of total dissolved phosphorus remained relatively stable during the rain events and did not decrease as dramatically as TN and TP. In addition, only parking lot and road runoff were contaminated by heavy metals, and both Pb (25–120 μg/L) and Zn (0.1–1.2 mg/L) were major heavy metals contaminating both runoff. Soluble Pb and Zn were predominantly existed as labile complex species (50%–99%), which may be adsorbed onto the surfaces of suspended particles and could be easily released out when pH decreased. This would have the great impact to the environment.