PORT ANGELES — Crews are ripping up the Clallam County courthouse parking lot to replace the surface with porous asphalt and rain gardens to help reduce pollution in Peabody Creek.
Parking will be impacted until the project is finished in December, said Joel Winborn, county Parks, Fair and Facilities manager.
People who have business at the courthouse are advised to give themselves extra time to park.
“There will be different areas of the parking lot that are going to be inaccessible at times,” Winborn said.
“The biggest impact is occurring right now.”
A triangle-shaped chunk of the east parking lot is closed now and will remain closed for the next few weeks.
Once the new asphalt is installed, crews will reopen the blocked-off area and move on to the next section.
Waived limit
The Port Angeles Police Department has temporarily waived the two-hour limit for street parking around the courthouse at 223 E. Fourth St.
“That helps,” Winborn said.
A major expansion of the courthouse in 1979 significantly increased the impervious surface area from which water flows into Peabody Creek, which supported a small salmon population before a culvert was installed at its mouth.
Low impact development such as porous asphalt and bioretention facilities absorb stormwater runoff, reducing the amount of water that flows into combined sewer mains causing raw sewage to spill into the environment.
“It’s going to help clean up all the surface residue that goes down storm drains,” Winborn said of the project.
County commissioners on Sept. 22 awarded a $333,333 contract to the low bidder — Interwest Construction Inc., of Burlington — for the stormwater retrofit.
Three-fourths of the cost comes from a state Department of Ecology grant.
Permeable pavement
Porous asphalt is a type of permeable pavement that allows stormwater to seep into the ground or an overflow pipe rather than collect at the surface.
Bioretention facilities, or rain gardens, are landscaped depressions with special soils and plants that collect and filter stormwater.
Crews broke ground on the parking lot retrofit Oct. 12. The contract expires Dec. 14.
“So far so good,” Winborn said Friday.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
