The hydrological performance of a permeable pavement

Abstract

Urban stormwater runoff is a transport medium for many contaminants from anthropogenic sources. There are many alternative management strategies available to treat these contaminants. One of the technologies suggested for this purpose is the use of permeable pavements to minimise the quantity of surface runoff generated by impervious surfaces within an urban catchment. Reported herein are the results of a monitoring program undertaken to assess the effectiveness of permeable road surface for managing the quantity and quality of stormwater runoff. It was found that the catchment, where the permeable road surface was installed, had the effective imperviousness reduced from 45% prior to reconstruction of the road surface to less than 5% after reconstruction of the road. Furthermore, it was found that the generation of surface runoff from the permeable road surface required a rainfall intensity in excess of 20 mm/h. Finally, the quality of the surface runoff was found to be at the lower levels of runoff from road surfaces.

Keywords:

• road
• urban
• runoff
• stormwater
• quality