You are here:
Permeable pavement monitoring at the Edison Environmental Center demonstration site
Citation:
ROWE, A., M. BORST, T. O'CONNOR, AND E. STANDER. Permeable pavement monitoring at the Edison Environmental Center demonstration site. In Proceedings, World Environmental & Water Resources Congress 2010, Challenges of Change, Providence, RI, May 18 - 20, 2010. Environmental & Water Resources Institute (EWRI) of ASCE, Reston, VA, 2908, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
There are few detailed studies of full-scale, replicated, actively-used pervious pavement systems. Practitioners need additional studies of pervious pavement systems in its intended application (parking lot, roadway, etc.) during a range of climatic events, daily usage conditions, and maintenance regimes to evaluate these systems. In accordance with this research need, the EPA’s Urban Watershed Management Branch (UWMB) installed an instrumented, working, full-scale, 110-space pervious pavement parking lot to be used by EPA Region 2 employees. The UWMB plans to monitor water quantity and quality parameters of side-by-side pervious asphalt, pervious concrete, and permeable interlocking concrete paver systems. The parking lot consists of three monitored pervious parking rows, each with a different surface separated by conventional asphalt driving lanes. 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. The instrumentation was installed in the pervious parkling rows during construction. Time domain reflectometers (TDRs) are installed 40 cm below the wearing surface and 15 cm into the underlying soil to monitor the wetting front passing through the subgrade profile. Thermistors installed in the wearing surface, at the interface between the wearing surface and the aggregate (depth varies among pervious surface types), 40 cm below the surface, 15 cm and 90 cm into the subgrade soil into the subgrade soil monitor temperature differences among the layers. The TDRs and thermistors record data at 10-minute intervals. The water depth at the aggregate-subgrade soil interface is monitored using differential pressure water level loggers. In another area of the unlined sections, a cluster of one well and two piezometers is installed to measure water depth via water level loggers. The conventional asphalt is also monitored with thermistors for comparison purposes. The lined parking sections are not instrumented, but the infiltrating water will be collected and analyzed for selected water quality parameters including: solids, bacteria, nutrients, metals, and semi-volatile organic compounds. The monitoring scheme outlined here will allow for performance evaluations of the three pervious pavement types, specifically pollutant removal capability and volume reduction of runoff. The possible reduction of the urban heat island effect of pervious surfaces will be explored with conventional asphalt as the control. This site is equipped for long-term monitoring and the effect of regular maintenance will be investigated by examining changes in infiltration rate with time.
URLs/Downloads:
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 5 KB, about PDF)Conference Program
Proceedings Access