Environment & LEED Friendly
Traditional concrete and asphalt pavements are impervious - they prevent water from infiltrating into the soil, creating runoff from parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks. Pervious concrete offers an alternative: it allows rain and stormwater runoff to drain directly through the pavement, and into the soil. Typical pervious concrete pavements have a void structure of 15-25%, which filters 3-8 gallons per square foot, per minute. This permeability greatly reduces the need for traditional stormwater management measures, such as storm sewer tie-ins and water retention ponds.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends the use of pervious pavement among its Best Management Practices for managing stormwater runoff. In addition, pervious paving can be credited towards LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification in high-performance building projects.

Cost Considerations
Major cities like Seattle have long recognized standard concrete paving as the lowest life cycle cost for paving. Pervious concrete helps local governments by slowing the growing need to expand municipal stormwater conveyance and treatment systems. Pervious concrete helps developers use expensive land that used to be set aside for onsite detention ponds to build income producing structures. Pervious concrete pavements also have higher light reflectance, or albedo, than asphalt. That reduces lighting costs by as much of 30%. Because the technology is so beneficial to the future of their areas, some local and state agencies give tax or system development credits for using pervious concrete pavements. In fact, the State of Texas now offers annual property tax credits if you use qualifying pervious concrete pavements.