The paper describes a method for the long-term simulation of the discharge of pollutants to the environment from storm sewer overflows in combined sewer systems, which has a connected retention basin. This study covers Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn and PAH. The method includes both the influence of the flow-dependant sedimentation and the variation of the settling velocity of the particles. The results show that including these effects lead to significant lower discharges of pollutants compared to conventional methods of estimation. As an example computations with a spectrum of basins which cover realistic sizes show that the long-term discharges of PAH are about half of the expected values without removal.