Retention basins are widely used in housing developments to collect storm water and gully water.
Some basins are simply grass seeded with a wet meadow mix grass seed, but many are planted with aquatic plants which clean the water before it is discharged into ditches and rivers.
We have recently planted a large water recycling system for Aberdeenshire Council at Ness in Aberdeen where the dirty gully water travels through a series of wetlands and is then stored in a pond and can then be re-used to clean and flush out roadside gullies. There are many advantages with this systems, one being that no contaminated water needs to be disposed of which is very costly and secondly, as the water is cleaned and re-used there is no waste.
Retention basin in Inverbervie