When it rains, pollutants are washed off the ground and make their way to the bay via stormwater drains, where they cause considerable damage to the environment. Many people ignore such things, but any damage to the environment will catch up to us. Anything in the bay has a way of seeping into the water supply, or making its way into our food. My project takes a preliminary look at a solution to this project -- filtering the stormwater drains. I aim to prevent the pollutants from reaching the bay's ecosystem. However, the system also needs to prevent water from building up and flooding, which is the engineering part of my project. I use a simulation of a rainy day with a model stormwater drain to test the effictiveness of the filters. Each filter is tested for its abilty to clean a defined amount of contaminants out of water and its ablity to let water pass through it quickly. If the filter impedes the water enough to cause flooding, I have a mechanism in place to let the excess water flow out.

The filters I tested were mostly ineffective for screening runoff because they slowed the flow of water too far. These filters could potentially cause flooding, and prevention of a flood would result in water that might not have been filtered at all. In a real-world application, the filters I tested in my project would be impractical, as they were not designed to be used without high pressures forcing the water through them. However, I believe that I have a good conceptual design and would simply need to refine the specifics. There are many new filter technologies under development, and there are other mechanisms to prevent flooding. With a little bit more research and effort, this project could make a significant positive change in the environment.