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Permeable Pavement Monitoring at the Edison Environmental Center Demonstration Site - presentation
Citation:
OCONNOR, T. P. Permeable Pavement Monitoring at the Edison Environmental Center Demonstration Site - presentation. Presented at Philadelphia Low Impact Development Symposium: Greening the Urban Environment , Philadelphia, PA, September 25 - 28, 2011.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The EPA’s Urban Watershed Management Branch has been monitoring an instrumented 110-space pervious pavement parking lot. The lot is used by EPA personnel and visitors to the Edison Environmental Center. The design includes 28-space rows of three permeable pavement types: asphalt, concrete and interlocking concrete pavers. These rows have four subsections underlain with an impermeable liner to collect the infiltrating water and five subsections that allow the filtered effluent to infiltrate to the underlying soil. Surface infiltration rates over the initial six months were comparable to those seen in the literature for each permeable surface type. After one year, some decreases in infiltration rates have been observed, predominantly on the near edge to the impermeable driving lane surface. Reduction in infiltration rate has not yet reached a point such that maintenance in the form of a regenerative-vacuum cleaning is needed. A suite of water quality parameters on the infiltrate have been periodically measured and results on metals and nutrients are available. Instrumented data include temperature and time domain reflectometers that document the passing of the wetting front through the system. The parking lot is having an effect on the pH of the collected rainfall and runoff. The collected infiltrate water is alkaline while the pH of rainfall in Edison is acidic. The parking lot made it through the first winter without an operational or maintenance incident. However after one year, an area with slight raveling has been observed in the porous concrete. The monitoring allows for the assessment of the long-term performance of permeable pavements as stormwater low impact development controls with regard to pollutant removal capability and runoff volume reduction.