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Permeable pavement demonstration site at Edison Environmental Center (Presentation)
Citation:
ROWE, A. Permeable pavement demonstration site at Edison Environmental Center (Presentation). Presented at EWRI ASCE 2010 International Low Impact Development Conference, San Francisco, CA, April 11 - 14, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
There are few studies of full-scale, outdoor, replicated, working pervious pavement systems. More studies of pervious pavement operating in its intended use (parking lot, roadway, etc.) during a range of climatic events, daily usage conditions, and maintenance regimes are necessary in order to properly evaluate these systems. In accordance with this research need, the EPA’s Urban Watershed Management Branch has installed an instrumented, working full-scale 110-space pervious pavement parking lot. EPA plans to monitor several environmental stressors and runoff. This parking lot demonstration site will allow the investigation of differences among side-by-side pervious asphalt, pervious concrete, and permeable interlocking concrete paver systems. The parking lot consists of three sets of parking rows, each one surfaced with a different pervious pavement type, and driving lanes surfaced with conventional asphalt. The pervious pavement parking areas have subsections lined with an impermeable liner to collect the infiltrating water as well as sections lined with a permeable geotextile liner to allow the filtered effluent to infiltrate the underlying soil. There are four impermeable and five permeable sections for each pervious pavement type, which allows for statistical analyses of collected data. Investigated parameters include: volume, temperature, solids, pathogens, nutrients, metals, and semi-volatile organic compounds. This parking lot is not a typical porous pavement installation for several reasons. The lot was built with monitoring as a goal; not as an afterthought. Monitoring equipment was installed throughout the various layers of the porous pavement profile as the lot was built. The conventional asphalt surface is also equipped with monitoring sensors for comparison. The placement of these instruments complicated the construction of the lot in many ways and accommodations were made in order to ensure the integrity of the delicate sensors. The ability to access the buried monitoring equipment was also desired and this issue was resolved via shrewd planning and a conscientious construction crew. This abstract is being submitted as part of the Permeable Pavement Symposium.