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Dan Kegley/Landscaping contractor Chad Owens of Abingdon hammers a nail that will hold down a strip of edging as he installs pavers for handicapped parking at the well fields head of the Helen Williams Barbrow Interpretive Trail in Saltville Thursday. The pavers are a green alternative to asphalt, according to Carol Doss of the Upper Tennessee River Roundtable.

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River Roundtable showcases green paving at trail head

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

A big, flat square of what look like reddish and off-white bricks took shape in Saltville’s well fields Wednesday and Thursday. On closer examination, the bricks at the Helen Williams Barbrow Interpretive Trail head are seen to be pavers, brick-like but thicker, capable of withstanding the weight of vehicles driving over and sitting on them.
The latter is their real purpose, or rather, one of their purposes. The pavers that form two parking spaces reserved for handicapped drivers create an environmentally friendlier surface than asphalt, and the Upper Tennessee River Roundtable is using the trailhead as a showcase for the paving procedure while helping handle rainwater at the trail head.
Carol Doss, coordinator of UTRR and Upper Tennessee River Roundtable and
Keep Southwest Virginia Beautiful, said the project is one of eight she managed to fund with grant money allocated for six projects in the Upper Tennessee River watershed.
The source of that money, a 2006 Water Quality Improvement grant, is the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation
“The focus of the grant that is paying for this project is to reduce storm water runoff,” Doss said.
Anyone who drives in heavy rain knows asphalt pavement is not water-permeable. Rain will pool in it, causing urban flooding in heavier rains. The imperviousness of asphalt means that parking lots of any size must be designed to collect storm water to reduce or eliminate runoff.
“The permeable pavers at the Saltville birding trail parking lot will allow rain water to soak through the ground rather than run off the surface,” Doss said. “As you know, so many times, traditional asphalt is used on parking lots, so we wanted to install pavers to reduce the runoff that would have been caused from traditional paving.”
Since only two spaces of the trail head parking lot are paved with the stones, the Saltville project is as much about awareness as presenting a full solution at the site.
“We also want to create some awareness by showing the public an alternative for asphalt,” Doss said. “Homeowners can do this type of project instead of paving a driveway.”
The coordinator said when the grant was written, one project she had in mind was a water garden to be installed in Hungry Mother State Park, with raising awareness of rain water control as a goal. “That would have been a very visible location because of so many visitors,” Doss said.
But after DCR approved the grant, the agency ruled the money could not be spent on state-owned land.
Doss still wanted to do a project in Smyth, she said, so she contacted the county supervisors because board member Charlie Clark was on the UTRR board at the time. She talked with Clark and with Assistant County Administrator Michael Carter.
“I had my then-assistant make a couple other contacts in Smyth County, too, and she talked with the manager at Food Country in Saltville,” Doss said.
That was John Summitt, active in supporting development of the Salt Trail on the rail bed between the town and Glade Spring. Doss and colleague Elizabeth Abe visited with Summitt who wanted them to do a project on the Rails-to-Trails development. They walked the Salt Trail, Doss said, and “discovered” the Barbrow interpretive trail.
“We walked the birding trail and came upon the gravel parking lot,” Doss said. “As we were looking at that lot, we were both thinking of doing some type of alternative paving there. Just then the town manager and another town employee, and in a few minutes, a councilman showed up. The timing was great on that.”
Doss said the officials were planning to pave the parking lot in a couple of weeks. “We asked them to wait until we could check to see if we could do a project there.”
DCR approved the project as Doss’ team studied alternative paving ideas. The trail head would become a stone paver pilot project for UTRR.
“We finally decided to try permeable pavers because we had never used them before and we wanted to do a demonstration site with them,” Doss said. “The town agreed.”
Next came one of Doss’ grant-stretching opportunities.
“I got the design donated by Jeff Stapleton, of Stapleton Landscape Architecture of Nickelsville,” she said. “Jeff does lots of work for us, both paid and unpaid, and he volunteered to do this for free.”
Doss wanted to pave the entire parking lot, but allotting $10,000 to $12,000 per project, she scaled the job back to the two parking spaces that ran “right at $10,000,” she said.
Doss sent a request for proposals to six people she said specialize as hardscape contractors familiar with paving stone “because it takes a specialized skill to install these properly. Chad [Owens] got the project and he has done work similar to this before.”
Water quality projects throughout the watershed have been designed and funded through the grant that UTRR has matched in-kind and by money, Doss said. Each will have a sign explaining the project.
Doss said a project similar to Saltville’s is underway in Pennington Gap with the installation of pavers between concession stand buildings on Leeman Field, a recreation park on the Powell River in Lee County.
“That will be a very visible location,” she said.
The other projects in the grant include several rain gardens in Washington County. Two are at elementary schools in Abingdon and Meadowview. One is at the Abingdon Senior Center, created in partnership with Master Gardeners and senior citizens. A rain garden at Abingdon Farmers’ Market is completed and a rain garden at Universal Companies is almost complete.
The grant also provided a green roof at St. Paul High School in Wise County that was completed last week, Doss said.
Rain gardens are pretty solutions to drainage problems like standing in areas with high visibility, Doss explained. “People just see pretty plants and don’t really know that it’s also very functional, too.”
Doss said a rain garden is designed to capture the first rainfall “instead of that water just running off or pooling and not draining off.”
Creating a rain garden is a three-step process.
“First, you dig down three feet,” Doss said. “Next, you put 12 inches of sand for a sand filter, then you put a soil mixture (compost, topsoil, sand), then plant plants that are tolerant of both drought conditions and really wet conditions. We use native plants usually.”
Doss said a rain garden holds water for 72 hours as it slowly filters down instead of ponding or running off.
“Sometimes we put a pipe to carry off overflow, especially for a bigger rain garden,” she said.
Back at Saltville, the pavers will play a role beyond rain water management. Owens found the ground saturated because of capillary action wicking upward an already high water table in the well fields. Over time, he said, the weight of cars on the surface would have “made a real mess and created a liability for the town.”
The pavers will provide drainage on the site, and not, it turns out, just when it rains.