Pervious Pavement

Paved surfaces are typically impervious- meaning water cannot penetrate their surface.  When it rains, water runs over their surface picking up pollution like motor oil, dirt, and litter.  The rainwater carries this pollution down the storm drain and into the Wabash River.  Many parts of urban areasPervious pavement can be used for driveways, parking areas, sidewalks, road shoulders, boat ramps, and as patios.  Pervious pavement requires no expansion to accommodate water moving through or across the pavement. This means that plants and weeds observed on traditionally-paved surfaces don’t occur in pervious pavement. Additionally, the light gray color associated with pervious concrete (one type of pervious pavement) reduces the amount of heat reflected from the paved surface on sunny days. On rainy days, pervious pavement reduces puddling and icing.

Pervious pavement is designed to allow polluted runoff to move through the paved surface into the soil surface below. Under typical rain conditions, 3 to 8 gallons of water per minute can move through each square foot of pervious pavement. Once water reaches the soil surface, the water is naturally filtered and pollutants are removed. Normal pavement forces water to run across its surface picking up sediment, nutrients, pesticides, herbicides and any other materials sitting on the pavement’s surface. Once this polluted runoff reaches the storm drain system, all of it pollutants are carried directly to the Wabash River. In some areas of Greater Lafayette, this polluted runoff combines with untreated sewage reaching the Wabash River with little to no filtration of polluted runoff.

Resources:

http://www.perviouspavement.org/

Pervious Concrete Contractor Certification Program

Local Contractors that work in pervious pavement:

IMI

Curbmasters