While a large amount of information on types of best management practices (BMPs) exists, quantitative information on performance effectiveness is difficult to find and not well documented. To in-crease the availability of performance data, at least one world-wide program – the National Transportation Product Evaluation Program (NTPEP) in the United States – has been developed to provide independent data on products, materials, and/or devices that are commonly used in erosion and sediment control sys-tems. NTPEP test reports contain data collected according to laboratory testing protocols selected through a consensus-based decision by the governing Technical Committee – generally comprised of rep-resentatives of numerous states’ Departments of Transportation. There is keen interest in the selected test-ing protocols being standardized testing procedures such as ASTM standards, if available. Standardized test methods provide clear protocols so that future testing of BMPs can be easily compared to the results of existing BMPs. This paper describes the large-scale performance tests incorporated into NTPEP’s pro-gram for erosion and sediment control products and reviews results of these tests on a range of erosion and sediment control BMPs.
Menu