permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

Ben Haggard (ReGenesis Design) and partners in Santa Fe have done a 
number of parking lots that, although compromised by code restrictions 
and the engineering mentality (Water is your enemy! Banish it to the 
ocean!), work pretty well. They are asphalt, laid out more or less on 
contour, and have parking-space-sized slots and other well-planted 
interruptions in the pavement to intercept runoff and allow it to 
percolate (think "series of small swales"). The engineers have forced 
them to put drains in them too, but even in big storms, water rarely 
makes it to the drains, or so Ben told me. The plantings probably help 
filter out petroleum pollutants too. You might be able to design some 
of the swales so that snow from plowing could be piled onto them to 
melt. They get some snow in Santa Fe, but not as much as Organic Valley 
does.

Toby
http://www.patternliteracy.com

>  Anyone have any
> experience in a northern clime with something other than gravel,
> asphalt, & these permeable tiles which shift around & would make it
> hard for snow plowing?