ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article was to study the effect of permeable pavements on runoff pollution control and its possible influence on groundwater quality in the area with high groundwater level. Three experimental permeable parking lots and one impermeable parking lot were built in urban Shanghai in order to monitor their quality of influent and effluent water under actual precipitation conditions, in order to investigate the performance of pollutant control effects and to evaluate the possibility of the pollution of groundwater. The results showed that all the three facilities could effectively remove TP, TSS, COD, Cr, Mn, Cu, Zn, Pb and O&G, but imposed poor removal efficiency on TN. Obvious release of NO3--N occurred in all three pavements. The permeable interlocking concrete pavement using cement stabilized crushed stones as base course and the one using crushed stones as base course had a better removal efficiency on NH4+-N than the previous concrete one. The quality of effluent water from different permeable pavements had no significant difference except NH4+-N. The in-situ groundwater quality was generally worse than background values of groundwater in Shanghai. Effluent water quality of three permeable pavements was generally worse than that of the in-situ groundwater, and a number of indicators belonged to or were close to groundwater class V standard. In the area with high groundwater level, there was risk of groundwater pollution caused by permeable pavements without liners.
