In The News

Permeable Parking Pavers Come to Columbia
Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute
June 24, 2008

By Jennifer Lindsay Smith
jsmith@jeffersoninstitute.org

WHAT: Installation of permeable pavers in Jefferson Farm & Gardens’ visitor parking lot

WHO: Jefferson Farm & Gardens and Missouri Department of Natural Resources

WHEN: 9 a.m. Wednesday June 25, 2008

WHERE: Jefferson Farm & Gardens

4800 New Haven Road, one mile east of U.S. Highway 63

WHY: Jefferson Farm & Gardens is installing two environmentally-friendly parking lots as an important water quality demonstration. The visitor parking lot will be installed with permeable pavers while the staff parking lot will be created with permeable asphalt. Both parking lots will reduce water runoff since rainwater will be able to percolate down through the paving. Additionally, dirt and oil from the parking lot will travel with the water through various layers of gravel, filtering the water and giving the oil time to break down before entering the Hinkson Creek watershed. Any excess runoff will be filtered through a rain garden.

This project is made possible by a $188,000 grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources with the goal of reducing erosion and chemical runoff in the Hinkson Creek watershed, which runs from Columbia to Hallsville and is currently on the federal 303(d) list of impaired waters.

Project staff, contractors and engineers will be on hand to make brief remarks and answer questions about this new approach to parking surfaces. City, state and university officials are expected to attend, including City of Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman. Also present to make remarks will be Bill Schneider, owner of LPS Pavement Company from Chicago, a company that has installed permeable parking lots at several institutional sites across the Midwest.