Saint Joseph’s College of Maine has permitted over the last two decades, several projects requiring the necessity to treat their site impervious surfaces for phosphorus export treatment through their state (MEDEP) and local municipal site permitting. The conventional measures of wet or infiltration ponds or forested buffers, takes its toll on available upland resources. Faced with a dilemma, for their proposed Westerlea Way Athletic Complex due to its enormous overall footprint for field and track areas, and positioning between wetland fragments, the choices to implement effective measures were limited and expensive. The option to use Porous Asphalt was a cost-effective and reasonable selection for the design application, given the limited planned winter use of their new athletic field parking lot.
Additionally, this proposed pavement system would not consume valuable land area to obtain effective, phosphorus export treatment, surface runoff cooling, and channel protection from the site runoff that eventually reaches the receiving water body of Sebago Lake. The design results also allowed a natural recharge of groundwater through infiltration, and a weeping effect to adjacent wetlands, thereby maintaining the important ecological balance of clean cool water for the wetland resources and species to continue to thrive so close to this new complex.
We found the design support very helpful, and the actual pavement placement by Dayton Sand and Gravel to be very professional, and clean in appearance. Something that was very important for the College to promote their new athletic facilities to alumni, students, and fans. And following their initial water testing, many discriminate doubters, were stunned by the product performance for rapid draining. We are very hopeful with a detailed maintenance plan that this will be a measure to be replicated potentially on other future projects at the College.
