SEQUIM –– A new stretch of pervious pavement is set to be laid today in the parking lot for the Albert Haller Playfields, part of the low-impact-development model at Sequim’s Water Reuse Demonstration Park.
With a lighter adhesive in the asphalt mix together, the pavement is porous enough to allow water to drain into the ground.
“So it ends up being kind of like a Rice Krispies cake, and the water can go through,” Conservation District Manager Joe Holtrop said.
A joint effort between the city and the Clallam Conservation District, the surface is a fairly new technology to the North Olympic Peninsula, Holtrop said.
“We do a lot of it down in Bremerton, but it really hasn’t shown up in a whole lot of places around here,” said Robert LaBelle, part of a crew from contractor Lakeside Industries of Port Angeles.
Lakeside crews prepared the ground with roughly graded rock Thursday.
LaBelle said the rough-grade foundation is key to allowing stormwater to filter through the pavement into soil instead of running off the street into pools.
Runoff in Sequim typically is collected in catch basins to drain and filter through the soil into the aquifer, Holtrop said.
This project is part of an agreement between the city and the Clallam Conservation District for a low-impact-development demonstration project.
The Albert Haller Playfield parking lot has been closed until today, but the playfields have been open.
Grants from the state Department of Ecology, Conservation Commission and federal Environmental Protection Agency are paying the bulk of the cost of the low-impact development of the park.
Drought-resistant plants have been planted to the south of the parking lot, and a demonstration rain garden will be finished as soon as next month.
The overall project has been a long time in the works, begun in 2008 by the Master Gardener Foundation of Clallam County and Washington State University’s Clallam Extension.
The two groups acquired the grants, but financial and time constraints forced them to back out.
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
