A. Selvakumar

A. Selvakumar
United States Environmental Protection Agency | US EPA · National Risk Management Research Laboratory,

Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering

About

98
Publications
89,555
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,711
Citations
Additional affiliations
March 1990 - February 1999
Foster Wheeler Environmental Coporation
Position
  • Environmental Engineer
March 1999 - present
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Position
  • Environmental Engineer
Education
January 1985 - May 1989
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Field of study
  • Civil & Environmental Engineering
August 1982 - May 1984
Asian Institute of Technology
Field of study
  • Environmental Engineering
August 1976 - June 1980
University of Peradeniya
Field of study
  • Civil Engineering

Publications

Publications (98)
Article
The funding needed to address aging water infrastructure ranges in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 25 years, and at current replacement rates, pipes are being expected to last for 200 years, although pipes are designed for 100 years or less. In addition to funding needs, utility congestion is making water main replacement more dif...
Article
As water and wastewater water utility owners seek innovative rehabilitation technologies to extend the service life of their assets there is a need to provide accurate performance and cost information on innovative technologies as they come to market. To meet this need, the US Environmental Protection Agency created a field demonstration program to...
Article
Pipe rehabilitation and trenchless pipe replacement technologies have seen a steadily increasing use over the past 30–40 years. Despite the massive public investment in the rehabilitation of the US water and wastewater infrastructure, there has been little formal and quantitative evaluation of whether rehabilitation technologies are performing as e...
Article
As part of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s Aging Water Infrastructure Research Program, several areas of research are being pursued including a review of quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) practices and acceptance testing during the installation of rehabilitation systems (USEPA 2011). The objectives of this research effort...
Article
This paper presents the results of a review of the state of technology for renewal of force mains. Force mains are critical components of many sewer collection systems with significant environmental and cost consequences for failure. The review identified several needs, including the need for rational and common design approaches for rehabilitation...
Article
Full-text available
Four types of permeable pavements were monitored at the Edison Environmental Center in Edison, New Jersey, for three water quality indicator organisms consisting of fecal coliform, enterococci, and Escherichia coli . This study expands a previously published result based on less than a year of available data. The current study reflects nearly 5 yea...
Article
Full-text available
Trees in urban settings have a significant role in regulating urban hydrologic cycle. Urban trees, either as standalone plantings or as part of a tree pit, are an increasingly popular stormwater management tool. Beyond their aesthetic contribution to urban environment, trees are widely accepted as reducing ambient air temperature. There is, however...
Article
The commenter mostly questions the validity of the curb cut runoff samples which relied on preprograming of automatic samplers and does not dispute the results or conclusions of the infiltrate study through the permeable surfaces which is the main emphasis of the study. As discussed in the paper, the sampling interval was set using the forecasted s...
Article
Full-text available
Despite the significant investments made in the use of cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) rehabilitation technologies, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) practices can vary widely among municipalities, and CIPP liner evaluations are mostly restricted to periodic CCTV inspections. The information in this paper is derived from a multi-year proje...
Article
Full-text available
Three types of permeable pavements were monitored at the Edison Environmental Center in Edison, New Jersey, for indicator organisms such as fecal coliform, enterococci, and Escherichia coli. Results showed that porous asphalt had a much lower concentration in monitored infiltrate compared to pervious concrete and permeable interlocking concrete pav...
Article
The needs associated with the deteriorating water infrastructure are immense and have been estimated at more than 1 trillion over the next 20 years for water and wastewater utilities. To meet this growing need, utilities require the use of innovative technologies and procedures for managing their systems. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Many utilities are seeking emerging and innovative rehabilitation technologies to extend the service life of their infrastructure systems. This report describes the testing and performance evaluation of an internal pipe sealing system, which provides a permanent physical seal for the spot rehabilitation of cracks, leaks, corrosion, and other defect...
Article
Full-text available
In order to assist the utilities in making well informed maintenance decisions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed an innovative technology demonstration program to evaluate technologies that have the potential to reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of the operation, maintenance, and renewal of aging water distribu...
Article
This paper provides new results gathered as part of a 6-year project funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to document the in-service performance of trenchless pipe rehabilitation techniques. The results from a pilot study focusing on cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) rehabilitation technologies were previously reported and the resear...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Many utilities are seeking emerging and innovative rehabilitation technologies to extend the service life of their infrastructure systems. However, information on new technologies is not always readily available and not easy to obtain. To help to provide this information, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed an innovative techno...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This report builds upon a previous pilot study to document the in-service performance of trenchless pipe rehabilitation techniques. The use of pipe rehabilitation and trenchless pipe replacement technologies has increased over the past 30 to 40 years and represents an increasing proportion of the approximately $25 billion annual expenditure on the...
Article
To assist utilities in making well-informed maintenance decisions, the EPA has developed an innovative technology demonstration program to evaluate technologies that have the potential to reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of the operation, maintenance, and renewal of aging water distribution and wastewater collection systems. Under this i...
Article
Full-text available
Condition assessment of wastewater collection systems is a vital part of a utility’s asset management program. Reliable information on pipe condition is needed to prioritize rehabilitation and replacement projects, given the current state of our nation’s infrastructure. Although inspections with conventional closed-circuit television (CCTV) have be...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
ABSTRACT The Nation's sanitary sewer infrastructure is aging, and is currently one of the top national water program priorities. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed the Sanitary Sewer Overflow Analysis and Planning (SSOAP) Toolbox to assist communities in developing SSO mitigation plans including sewer capacity and condition as...
Article
The needs associated with the aging water infrastructure are immense and have been estimated at more than $1 trillion dollars over the next 20 years for water and wastewater utilities. To meet this growing need, utilities require the use of innovative technologies and procedures for managing their systems. To help meet their needs, the U.S. Environ...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The impact that the lack of investment in water infrastructure will have on the performance of aging underground infrastructure over time is well documented and the needed funding estimates range as high as $325 billion over the next 20 years. With the current annual replacement rate averaging 0.5%, pipes would be expected to last for 200 years, bu...
Article
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency developed a decision-support system, System for Urban Stormwater Treatment and Analysis Integration (SUSTAIN), to evaluate alternative plans for stormwater quality management and flow abatement techniques in urban and developing areas. SUSTAIN provides a public domain tool capable of evaluating the optimal locat...
Article
In regards to the development of software for decision support for pipeline renewal, most of the attention to date has been paid to the development of asset management models, which help an owner decide on which portions of a system to prioritize for needed actions. There has not been much work in terms of providing guidance on whether to rehabilit...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Recognizing the need for tools to support the development of sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) control plans, in October 2009 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the first version of the Sanitary Sewer Overflow Analysis and Planning (SSOAP) Toolbox. This first version of the SSOAP Toolbox contained modeling software with five functi...
Article
Presented in this paper are the results of a state-of-the-practice survey on the rehabilitation of water distribution and wastewater collection systems. The survey identified several needs, including the need for rational and common design approaches for rehabilitation systems, quality assurance/quality control procedures and acceptance testing dur...
Article
As many water utilities are seeking new and innovative rehabilitation technologies to extend the life of their water distribution systems, information on the capabilities and applicability of new technologies is not always readily available from an independent source. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed an innovative technology...
Article
Many utilities are seeking innovative rehabilitation technologies to extend the life and fix larger portions of their water distribution systems with current funding levels. The information on the capabilities and applicability of new technologies is not always readily available or easy to obtain from an independent source. To meet these needs, the...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Renewal technologies being used for the repair, replacement and/or rehabilitation of deteriorating water distribution systems are generally effective, but there is still considerable room for improvement of these existing technologies and for the development of new technologies. Many utilities and municipalities are seeking innovative rehabilitatio...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Pipe rehabilitation and trenchless replacement technologies have seen a steadily increasing use and represent an increasing proportion of the annual expenditure on operations and maintenance of the nation’s water and wastewater infrastructure. Despite public investment in use of these technologies, there has been little quantitative evaluation of h...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The System for Urban Stormwater Treatment and Analysis Integration (SUSTAIN) was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide stormwater managers with a decision support system for the cost-efficient selection and placement of stormwater best management practices (BMPs) in urban watersheds. The SUSTAIN modeling system inte...
Conference Paper
As part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s Aging Water Infrastructure Research Program, one key area of research pursued, in collaboration with wastewater and water utilities, was a study of the current approaches available for making rehabilitation versus replacement decisions. The purpose of this study was to: (1) identify the cu...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Reliable information on pipe condition is needed to accurately estimate the remaining service life of wastewater collection system assets. Although inspections with conventional closed-circuit television (CCTV) have been the mainstay of pipeline condition assessment for decades, other technologies are now commercially available. Five such innovativ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
There is limited information regarding the in-situ performance of rehabilitation methods used for prolonging the service life of buried municipal pipeline systems. With some CIPP liners nearly 30 years in service, municipalities are expressing a strong interest in the collection of data regarding the condition of these CIPP liners to validate assum...
Article
Cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) has been successfully used for the rehabilitation of deteriorating wastewater pipes for nearly 30 years in the U.S. However, little quantitative data is available regarding the performance of these liners that can confirm their estimated design life. With more than 70 million feet of CIPP liners installed worldwide, utili...
Article
The nation's sanitary sewer infrastructure is aging, with some sewers dating back more than 100 years. Nationwide, there are more than 19,500 municipal sanitary-sewer collection systems serving an estimated 150 million people and about 40,000 sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) events per year. Aging water infrastructure is currently one of the top natio...
Article
A USEPA-sponsored field demonstration program was conducted to gather technically reliable cost and performance information on the electro-scan (FELL-41) pipeline condition assessment technology. Electro-scan technology can be used to estimate the magnitude and location of potential leaks along a pipeline, helping utilities better understand and co...
Article
Full-text available
Many stream restoration projects do not include a requirement for long-term monitoring after the project has been completed, resulting in a lack of information about the success or failure of certain restoration techniques. The National Risk Management Research Laboratory, part of the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development, evaluated the effec...
Article
Full-text available
Several compositions of Fenton's Reagent and hydrogen peroxide alone were used to disinfect combined sewage samples from a wastewater treatment facility. The presettled samples contained suspended solids (SS) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) at concentrations of 28 and 290 mg/L, respectively. Disinfection with Fenton's Reagent was carried out at...
Technical Report
Full-text available
As part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Aging Water Infrastructure Research Program, which directly supports the Agency’s Sustainable Water Infrastructure Initiative, scientific and engineering research is being conducted to evaluate and improve promising innovative technologies that can reduce costs and improve the effectivenes...
Conference Paper
Swales are "engineered vegetated ditches" that provide stable routing for stormwater runoff. They provide a low-cost drainage option for highways, farms, industrial, and commercial areas. It is reported in the literature that swales mitigate the runoff-carried pollutants, reduce runoff volume, and reduce peak stormwater runoff rate that can damage...
Article
Microbial indicator organisms make up the greatest number of reported receiving water impairments, resulting in many questions on the fate of indicator bacteria passing through storm-water best management practices BMPs. Storm-water BMPs are often considered effective tools to mitigate the effects of urbanization on receiving waters. The USEPA's, O...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Installation of best management practices (BMPs) in watersheds or streams is widely used as a means of reducing, eliminating, or controlling the input of human-based physical, chemical, or hydrologic stressors to those systems. Although BMPs may be effective in managing a particular stressor, installation of stream bank and channel restoration alon...
Article
Increased urbanization results in a larger percentage of connected impervious areas which can contribute large quantities of stormwater runoff, debris and pollutants to receiving waters. Increased runoff volume causing stream channel degradation affects the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the stream. Stream bank erosion can lead to...
Article
The sources of heavy metals in urban stormwater runoff are diverse (e. g., highways, road surfaces, roofs) and the release of metals into the environment is governed by several complex mechanisms. Heavy metals in stormwater are associated with suspended particulate materials that vary from coarse (>75 μm) and fine particulates (<75 to 1 μm), to col...
Article
The purpose of this on-going project is to provide information to Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4s) operators and states on the performance of selected best management practices (BMPs), specifically, stream restoration techniques, on improving biological and instream water quality within an urban watershed. Accotink Creek in Fairfax City...
Article
Research has shown stormwater runoff from urban areas can have high concentrations of microbial indicator organisms. Stormwater best management practices (BMPs) are often considered effective tools to mitigate the affects of urbanization on receiving waters. Microbial indicator organism make up the greatest number of reported receiving water impair...
Article
Stormwater best management practices (BMPs) are often considered effective tools to mitigate the effects of stormwater pollutants before they are discharged to receiving waters. However, BMP performance for microorganism removal is not well documented. Microorganism die-off in stormwater runoff is a complex process involving various types of enviro...
Conference Paper
Microbial contamination from fecal origins in stormwater runoff poses a risk to human health through the consumption of drinking water and recreational and bathing contact with surface waters. Indicator bacteria serve as the regulatory meter by which water quality is measured and water quality standards (WQS) must be met. Research on constructed we...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Swales are "engineered vegetated ditches" that provide stable routing for stormwater runoff and a low-cost drainage option for highways, farms, industrial sites, and commercial areas. It is reported in the literature that swales mitigate runoff-carried pollutants, reduce runoff volume, and reduce peak stormwater runoff rate that can damage low-orde...
Poster
Full-text available
The presence of heavy metals in urban wet-weather flow discharges is a major concern due to their toxicity, bioavailability, and persistence in the environment. The sources of heavy metals are varied, e.g. rooftops, building materials, asphalt surfaces, traffic activities, automobile wear, atmospheric deposition, and accidental spills. Constructed...
Article
Full-text available
Generic hardwood mulch, usually used for landscaping, was utilized to remove several selected pollutants (heavy metals and toxic organic compounds) typically found in urban stormwater (SW) runoff. The hardwood mulch sorbed all the selected pollutants from a spiked stormwater mixture, including copper (Cu(2+)), cadmium (Cd(2+)), chromium (Cr(6+)), l...
Conference Paper
This chapter contains three sections by U.S. EPA authors that reflect contribution of the Agency's research programs towards protection of watersheds through better understanding of capabilities and beneficial uses of BMP technologies. The topics presented here blend well with those presented by "outsiders," which proves that the EPA keeps up well...
Article
Stormwater runoff samples were collected from outfalls draining small municipal separate storm sewer systems. The samples were collected from three different land use areas based on local designation (high-density residential, low-density residential and landscaped commercial). The concentrations of microorganisms in the stormwater runoff were foun...
Article
Stormwater runoff samples were collected from outfalls draining small municipal separate storm sewer systems. The samples were collected from three different land use areas based on local designation (high-density residential, low-density residential and landscaped commercial). The concentrations of microorganisms in the stormwater runoff were foun...
Article
Full-text available
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency strives to protect human health, ensure the safety of drinking and recreational waters, support economic and recreational activities, and provide healthy habitat for fish, plants, and wildlife. To accomplish these objectives, the Agency emphasizes restoring and maintaining our oceans, watersheds, and their a...
Conference Paper
Using studies conducted of the effectiveness of conventional silt fence installed on and off the contour at the Silt Fence Test Facilty (SFTF) at the USDA Hydraulics Laboratory located in Stillwater, OK, a model was developed of sediment trapping by silt fence when not installed on the contour. Based on these studies and other results from the lite...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Studies were conducted of the effectiveness of silt fence installed on and off the contour at the Silt Fence Test Facilty (SFTF) at the USDA Hydraulics Laboratory laboratory in Stillwater, OK. Sediment laden flow from a source area was generated by a rainfall simulator using three different soil textures. This flow was directed to conventional silt...
Book
Full-text available
The use of BMPs to control and treat urban stormwater runoff has become a common practice in urban watershed management. This has been propagated by ordinances developed by local governments that dictate the use of structural and nonstructural BMPs for new and existing development and to protect surface water quality and mitigate the impacts of sto...
Article
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency strives to protect human health, ensure the safety of drinking and recreational waters, support economic and recreational activities, and provide healthy habitat for fish, plants, and wildlife. To accomplish these objectives, the Agency emphasizes restoring and maintaining our oceans, watersheds, and their a...
Article
Many municipalities throughout the US have sewer systems (separate and combined) that may experience exfiltration of untreated wastewater. A study was conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to focus on estimating the magnitude of leakage of sanitary and industrial wastewater from sewer pipes on a national basis. The method for...
Conference Paper
Stormwater samples collected from storm sewers draining small municipal separate storm sewer systems shown to be free of cross connections within an urban watershed dominated by a single land use were analyzed for pathogens (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus) and indicator organisms (total coliforms, fecal coliforms, fecal streptococ...
Article
This research investigated the effects of extending the holding time of samples for microbial analysis beyond the standard of 24 hours for purposes such as watershed characterization. Experiments were conducted with both sanitary wastewater and stormwater samples. The refrigerated samples (4 degrees C) were held for up to 9 days before being analyz...
Article
This research investigated the effects of blending and chemical addition before analysis of the concentration of microorganisms in stormwater runoff from a single summer storm to determine whether clumped or particle-associated organisms play a significant role. The standard membrane filtration method was used to enumerate the microorganisms. All o...
Article
This study investigated differences in pathogen and indicator organism concentrations in stormwater runoff between different urban land uses and seasons. Stormwater samples collected from storm sewers draining small municipal separate storm sewer systems shown to be free of cross connections within an urban watershed dominated by a single land use...