A.P.L.E.T.S.

Assessment of Pollutant Loads and Evaluation of Treatment Systems

In today's field of land development, the paradigm of storm water management has been slowly evolving from simply reducing the peak rate of runoff for developed conditions to match the peak rate from existing conditions to a paradigm of addressing water quality issues and reducing the volume of storm water runoff. The majority of adverse impacts to water quality are due to human activities, such as land development and the discharge of storm water runoff. However, analyzing the changes in pollutant loads and how well the treatment systems work has been adequately addressed by the land development community. A.P.L.E.T.S. has been designed to address this particular issue.

A.P.L.E.T.S. is a stand alone program designed to create a uniform technical standard to calculate the pollutant loads and evaluate the effectiveness of storm water treatment systems to remove pollutants. A.P.L.E.T.S. uses the Simple Method which was developed in 1987 by Tom Schueler of the Center for Watershed Protection. The Simple Method is used to assess the changes in pollutant loads from natural to developed conditions. The Simple Method uses simple parameters, such as rainfall, land area, percent impervious coverage and pollutant concentration, to calculate the load of a pollutant in pounds.

A.P.L.E.T.S. calculates the pollutant loads for seven common pollutant associated with Non-Point Source Pollution. These pollutants are TSS, TP, TN, Zn, Cu, TPH, and DIN. A.P.L.E.T.S. will calculate the pollutant loads for eleven natural land use types and eleven different types of common development conditions. A.P.L.E.T.S. uses pollutant concentrations taken from the most current available data for the seven pollutants and the twenty-two land use covers.

A.P.L.E.T.S. has the ability to evaluate the pollutant removal efficiencies for thirty-four Conventional and Low Impact Development storm water treatment systems. A.P.L.E.T.S. can evaluate the effectiveness of up to four treatment systems in series, as in a "treatment train". A.P.L.E.T.S. calculates the amount of the load in pounds removed by each treatment system and the total load removed by all the selected treatment systems.

A.P.L.E.T.S. can evaluate the pollutant removal efficiencies for multiple configurations of treatment systems quickly and easily thus allowing design engineer to evaluate different combinations of treatment systems during the design process.

A.P.L.E.T.S. is an expandable program which will be upgraded as new pollutant data and removal efficiencies are available from the numerous research universities involved in this work.

Each copy of A.P.L.E.T.S. can be installed on one computer only. A copy of A.P.L.E.T.S. can be purchased for $1,500.00 for municipalities or $1,590.00 including Connecticut Sales Tax for non-municipal individuals and companies. Discount pricing is available for purchases of multiple copies of A.P.L.E.T.S. at one time. Contact the Steve Trinkaus below.

INFORMATION about purchasing A.P.L.E.T.S. can be obtained by contacting Steve Trinkaus, PE at 203-264-4558, by email at aplets@earthlink.net or strinkaus@earthlink.net

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