Pervious Concrete Pavement Reduces Runoff into Shoreview Lake

The city of Shoreview, Minnesota was on the right track when it took the unusual step of paving a residential neighborhood with pervious concrete to help control stormwater and pollutant runoff into a nearby lake, according to a recently released seven-year performance study.

Typically used for parking lots and sidewalks, porous paving material allows stormwater to filter through the pavement and an aggregate base into the soil rather than run off the pavement and drain into storm sewers.

Shoreview bucked convention by using pervious concrete in a traffic application — low-volume, low-speed roads in the Woodbridge neighborhood near Lake Owasso. The city thought pervious pavement could help meet community sustainability goals and federal clean water regulations by reducing pollutants in waterways and groundwater while keeping water safely off driving surfaces.

Traditionally, pervious concrete hadn’t been used for roadways because engineers didn’t consider it strong enough for traffic (this and other projects have now demonstrated its application for low-volume roads like neighborhood streets). The impact on ride quality, tire-pavement noise and filtration was also not well understood, particularly in cold climates with freeze-thaw cycles like those in Minnesota.

Pervious concrete also presented a maintenance challenge: Organic debris, sand and other grit can clog the pavement’s pores. Periodic vacuuming is required to maintain the intended flow of water through the pavement. Concerned about how best to maintain the pavement and interested in tire-pavement noise levels and filtering performance, Shoreview, MnDOT and the Local Road Research Board monitored the Woodbridge roadways for seven years.

Installation and Evaluation

Shoreview replaced 9,000-square -feet of asphalt roads with 7 inches of pervious concrete over 18 inches of coarse aggregate base; near the lake, highly drainable sand served as the base. About twice each year for five years, researchers tested sound absorption, water infiltration and ride quality one day after the pavement had been vacuumed. In 2015, they repeated these tests without vacuuming the day before.

The pervious pavement performed well in filtering stormwater. By 2012, at least 1.3 acre-feet of water had filtered through the pavement and ground, and by 2015, nearly 2 acre-feet of water had filtered through the surface—all of which would otherwise have run directly into Lake Owasso.

Water infiltration and sound absorption rates were higher than traditional concrete, although rates declined over time because organic material continued to clog pavement pores despite vacuuming twice a year.

Conclusions

Initial construction of the pervious concrete streets and stormwater filtration system was slightly more costly than construction of comparable asphalt pavement with culverts. Life-cycle costs, including projections of maintenance costs over 15 years, however, showed somewhat lower costs for pervious pavement. While the pervious concrete pavement may require diamond grinding after 10 years, monthly vacuuming could make this unnecessary. Asphalt pavement would typically require a mill-and-overlay at year 15, and culverts would require periodic cleaning.

Additional benefits of the pervious pavement system that were not included in cost calculations—but were clearly significant—included complying with the federal Clean Water Act, recharging groundwater and avoiding direct pollution of Lake Owasso. Shoreview’s investment in pervious concrete has paid off economically and environmentally.

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