Spotlight on Porous Pavement

It is an increasingly well-known fact that the volume and velocity of stormwater increases as the amount of impervious surface expands in developed areas. However, a number of innovative stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) are available that facilitate the infiltration of stormwater into the ground, thereby reducing stormwater runoff. One example is porous pavement, which is part of a new demonstration project at a set of basketball courts in Philadelphia. 

Porous pavement is specially designed asphalt surfacing with larger pore sizes that allows water to soak through. The Philadelphia Office of Watersheds recently implemented four stormwater management retrofit projects, one of which is the porous basketball court at Mill Creek Playground, 48th and Fairmount Streets. The Mill Creek Playground is heavily used by the Mill Creek community for sports, activities, and meetings. The site includes two basketball courts, play equipment, a recreation center, a baseball field and a swimming pool built above the buried Mill Creek, which is one of the largest combined sewers in Philadelphia. The basketball courts at the playground were cracked and deteriorating, with low spots that filled with water in the rain. To improve the quality of the courts and reduce the volume of stormwater that flows into the Mill Creek combined sewer, the basketball courts were retrofitted with porous asphalt over an infiltration bed. Rain that falls on the basketball courts passes through the porous surface and is stored in a subsurface stone bed until it can soak into the ground. 

Benefits  of the project include:

• Porous surface and crushed stone infiltration bed will capture more than 90% of the stormwater that falls on the two basketball courts, allow it to infiltrate into the soil, and reduce the volume of stormwater that flows into the Mill Creek Sewer. 

• Office of Watersheds is able to monitor the long term stormwater function, integrity, and maintenance requirements of the porous asphalt surface, as well as determine the community response to the new surface. 

• No puddles on the court ~ players can play immediately after it rains. 

• Because the stormwater is infiltrated into the ground rather than running off the site, the groundwater in the area is recharged, which helps during times of drought.

To view a fact sheet on this project, click here.

For more information on porous pavement or other infiltration stormwater Best Management Practices, contact F. X. Browne, Inc. at info@fxbrowne.com.