New parking lot created with care

Delbert Smith places a brick into place in a project at the city-owned parking lot on Jefferson Street in Fulton. The new paver system is the first of its kind in town, and will allow for better, cleaner drainage of stormwater.
Delbert Smith places a brick into place in a project at the city-owned parking lot on Jefferson Street in Fulton. The new paver system is the first of its kind in town, and will allow for better, cleaner drainage of stormwater.

First comes a major hole in the ground, into which black plastic drain pipe is laid.

Next comes a layer of base rock, followed by a thick layer of clean rock, a plastic netting, then special concrete blocks.

When finished, the project at the city-owned parking lot in the middle of a downtown Fulton block will provide much needed stormwater runoff relief.

At first glance, it doesn't look as creative and eco-friendly as it actually is. The new surface look like regular gray pavers.

However, those pavers are bricks shaped with arched spaces underneath, allowing for more runoff. They also have interlocking sides.

It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

"Once you get it figured out, it's not too bad," city worker Delbert Smith said.

The project is being laid in the parking lot in a block with boundaries on Jefferson, Sixth, Nichols and Fifth streets.

"We had an engineering company look at this area," Fulton City Engineer Kyle Bruemmer said. "We were looking for a solution without totally changing the landscape."

If the parking lot was built up, it would hinder access to doors into surrounding buildings.

"They're already having issues," Bruemmer said of occasional dampness after big storms. "With this, we don't have to change the grade. These bricks act like an inlet."

Small gaps between the new bricks channel water down to the gravel and into the stormwater pipes. This all flows to stormwater pipes on Jefferson Street, which eventually lead south - downhill - to Stinson Creek.

Also added to the project is a series of "R tanks," or holding tanks.

"They create a void for water to hole up in," Bruemmer said. "Water can pond up and release as it can to Jefferson Street. The idea is, we know from the engineering group, is that we have a bottleneck on Jefferson Street as it gets closer to the creek."

Eventually drainage pipes on Jefferson Street will be replaced, but because of this project, they can be replaced with smaller-diameter pipes, saving the city money in materials.

"We can save money if we do things like this," Bruemmer said. "We won't have to keep making (drainage pipes) bigger and bigger and not hit the creek (with stormwater) all at once. And the water should be cleaner going down to that creek."

This is the first project of its kind in Fulton, but if it works as well as city officials think, there may be more.

This project costs approximately $23,000.

Bruemmer said there also will be three inlets added to the project, which is only a portion of the parking lot. He said he hopes surrounding building owners will connect their downspouts directly to the inlets.

"That will help directly out their back doors," he added.