The Port of Portland's work in furthering sustainable design projects was rewarded recently when the Oregon Chapter of the American Public Works Association presented its Julian Prize for Sustainability for the port's Terminal 6 Auto Warehousing Company Expansion Porous Pavement Project.
Constructed in 2006, the project installed 35 acres of "porous" asphalt at one of the port's auto-import facilities. While water runs off most asphalt, porous asphalt allows stormwater to leak through the surface and recharge the groundwater in a more environmentally friendly way.
Under the terms of a long-term lease with Auto Warehousing Co., the port needed to expand AWC's T-6 facility by approximately 50 acres for auto storage. The port hired Century West Engineering, a consulting firm specializing in sustainable design, for improvements to the auto storage area including new pavement, fencing, landscaping, and lighting.
To more effectively manage the large volume of stormwater runoff that would be generated from a traditional impervious surface, the design team employed a porous pavement system and a series of swales and natural vegetation to infiltrate 100 percent of the stormwater from the additional acreage.
Century West Engineering partnered with GreenWorks, a Portland-based landscape architecture firm with a sustainable design focus, and Cahill Associates, a nationally recognized stormwater management expert specializing in porous pavement, to design the project. The prime contractor on the project was Coffman Excavation, while Lakeside Industries was the paving subcontractor and asphalt supplier.
Amenities such as the project's rain garden and richly planted bioswales demonstrate successful collaboration between functional engineering and landscape aesthetics to manage complex stormwater issues.
