Science Inventory

Organism Detection in Permeable Pavement Parking Lot Infiltrates at the Edison Environmental Center, New Jersey

Citation:

Selvakumar, A. AND T. OConnor. Organism Detection in Permeable Pavement Parking Lot Infiltrates at the Edison Environmental Center, New Jersey. WATER ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH. Water Environment Federation, Alexandria, VA, 90(1):21-29, (2018). https://doi.org/10.2175/106143017X14902968254575

Impact/Purpose:

Since the inception of the Clean Water Act (CWA) in 1972, the United States has made great efforts to restore and preserve the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters. However, nearly half of the nation’s assessed surface waters remain incapable of maintaining water quality adequate for supporting one or more designated uses, for example, recreational swimming, fishing, or drinking water supply. National biennial water quality surveys consistently indicate waters are impaired by bacterial indicators, nutrients, sediments, and/or assorted toxic chemical loadings. A leading cause of this impairment is from stormwater runoff. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the performance of permeable pavement in removing indicator organisms such as fecal coliform, enterococci and E. coli from infiltrating stormwater runoff. This data could be useful for municipalities, planners, consultants, and regulators interested in using permeable pavement to control stormwater runoff.

Description:

Three types of permeable pavements were monitored at the Edison Environmental Center in Edison, New Jersey for indicator organisms such as fecal coliform, enterococci, and E. coli. Results showed that porous asphalt had much lower concentration in monitored infiltrate compared to pervious concrete and permeable interlocking concrete pavers; concentrations of monitored organisms in infiltrate from porous asphalt were consistently below the bathing water quality standard and actually had limited detection. Fecal coliform and enterococci exceeded bathing water quality standards more than 72% and 34% of the time for permeable interlocking concrete pavers and pervious concrete, respectively. Both porous asphalt and pervious concrete had concentration reductions greater than 90% for all three indicator organisms when compared to runoff values, while permeable interlocking concrete pavers had greater than 90% reduction for E. coli only. Neither rain intensity nor temperature was demonstrated to have an observable effect in both concentrations of organisms and performance of permeable pavement; but this may due to the limitations of the dataset consisting of 16 events over an eight-month period.