A Review of the Performance of Permeable Pavers

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 pavers for reducing the quantity and quality of stormwater runoff. It was found that the catchment where a Rocla Ecoloc paver was installed had the effective imperviousness reduced from 45% prior to reconstruction of the road surface with the permeable pavers to less than 5% after reconstruction of the road. At the same time, the quality of the surface runoff was found to be at the lower levels of runoff from road surfaces while no increase in stormwater contaminants within the groundwater system was monitored.