WATER QUALITY IMPACTS OF URBANISATION RELATING WATER QUALITY TO URBAN FORM

Effective urban resource planning and management entails the mitigation of the impacts of urbanisation on the water environment. The significance stems from the fact that water environments are greatly valued in urban areas as environmental, aesthetic and recreational resources and hence are important community assets. Urbanisation has a profound influence on stormwater runoff quality. This is due to changes to the hydrology of the catchment and the introduction of pollutants resulting from various anthropogenic activities common to urban areas. Though the sources and causes of stormwater pollution are known, its control constitutes an intractable challenge in the drive towards sustainable human settlements. These difficulties can be ascribed to the fact that the current focus on urban water quality is of relatively recent origin. It is a paradigm shift from the sole focus in the past on quantity issues for flood mitigation. However the techniques and approaches adopted are strongly rooted in quantity research undertaken in the past. This applies not only to modelling philosophies, but also to the conducting of research and data analysis. There is undue reliance on physical processes and the neglect of important chemical processe