Miller Creek is geomorphically typical of many North Shore streams, with low-gradient headwaters surrounded by wet shrublands, becoming incised as it nears the ridgeline, and finally dropping rapidly across exposed bedrock as it descends to the St. Louis River estuary of Lake Superior. The land use within the basin is mixed, with the headwaters relatively undeveloped, a large commercial area in the middle section of the basin, and dense residential and commercial lands in the lower section of the basin.
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In short, SWMM is widely used, widely documented, supported since its development, and has an inexpensive program available to reduce the required learning-time. We used a two-year hourly discharge dataset for three sites along the Miller Creek mainstream to calibrate and validate the flow portion of the model. This data was collected by the Minnesota DNR in 1997 and 1998. The data provided was single-event storm loads for each pollutant, covering 3 to 5 storm events for each site. Concentrations were not available.