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Permeable Pavement Monitoring at the Edison Environmental Center Demonstration Site - Abstract
Citation:
OCONNOR, T., M. BORST, A. ROWE, AND E. STANDER. Permeable Pavement Monitoring at the Edison Environmental Center Demonstration Site - Abstract. Presented at 2010 AWRA Annual Water Resources Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 01 - 04, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The EPA’s Urban Watershed Management Branch (UWMB) is monitoring an instrumented, working, 110-space pervious pavement parking at EPA’s Edison Environmental Center (EEC). Permeable pavement systems are classified as stormwater best management practices (BMPs) which reduce runoff through infiltration and provide treatment through physical, chemical, and biological processes. This technology was first applied in the 1970s but due to perceived and reported problems was largely abandoned until recently. With advances in this technology and the increasing mandates, e.g. Total Maximum Daily Loads, to effectively manage urban stormwater, the suite of BMPs once again has broadened to include permeable pavements. However, there are few detailed studies of full-scale, replicated, actively-used permeable pavement systems. Practitioners need additional studies of permeable pavement systems in the intended application (e.g., parking lot, roadway) across a range of climatic events, daily usage conditions, and maintenance regimes to evaluate the applicability of these systems for their situation. EPA plans a long-term study to examine three types of permeable pavement systems in the EEC’s recently constructed parking lot, i.e., October, 2009, which provides parking for both facility staff and visitors. The driving lanes are paved with conventional asphalt, but four parking rows have permeable pavement. One parking row is paved with porous asphalt, two are paved with porous concrete, and one with interlocking concrete pavers. The parking rows are complete permeable pavement systems, and some sections of each row allow water to infiltrate into the underlying soil while other sections have an impermeable liner to collect the exfiltrate for measurement and sampling. There are four impermeable and five permeable sections for each pervious pavement type, which allows for statistical analyses of collected data. Only one of the two porous concrete rows has lined sections and monitoring capability. Water quality after infiltration is monitored on an event basis, and soil infiltration rates are monitored through continuous measurements of volumetric water content. The project evaluates several other parameters, including groundwater levels, maintenance schedules for the porous treatments, surface infiltration rates, the possibility of urban heat island mitigation via surface temperature reductions, parking rates, and the long-term durability of permeable pavements.