GEOPAVE® & GEOWEB® Porous Pavement Systems

Project Name: Lake Shore Drive

Project Location: Auburn, Maine

Highly permeable GEOPAVE & GEOWEB Gravel Porous Pavement Systems meet stormwater drainage and traffic needs.

The GEOPAVE® and GEOWEB® Porous Pavement Systems were installed along the side of Lake Shore Drive in Auburn, Maine, and filled with aggregate to improve drainage from runoff and make the shoreline safer for vehicles and pedestrians who stop along Lake Auburn just beyond Taber’s Lakeside Stand.

Excerpt from SUN JOURNAL, Published September 22, 2010

Asphalt wasn’t the answer for the improved turnout lane along Lake Shore Drive, Water District officials said.

“We wanted something that would drain,” said Sid Hazelton, district engineer for the Auburn Water District. “When we had rain and runoff, we wanted something water permeable, so we didn’t just have sheets of water running right from the road into the lake.”

But loose gravel and rock didn’t work, either. They’d been tried before, and Water District officials found that rain and road runoff just carried them into the lake.

“We wanted something stable, that a truck could pull onto,” Hazelton said.

The district is testing two new paving systems designed to provide a solid parking place while letting runoff drain.

The first, called GEOPAVE®, is a series of plastic paver units with a monolithic mesh bottom filled with crushed rock. It’s being installed on the first half of the 600-foot gravel turnout along Lake Shore Drive just north of Taber’s Lakeside Stand.

The second system, called GEOWEB®, will fill an expanded accordion-like structure with gravel. Crews should finish installing both systems this month.

Auburn is testing the system using a $50,000 Federal Highway Authority Surface Water Quality Protection grant. The Maine Department of Transportation awarded the grant to the Water District and is managing it. Water District crews are performing all of the work, Hazelton said.

“The state is looking at this because there are a couple of different places with similar situations that it might work,” he said.

Project Update: Lake Auburn Aggregate Road Shoulder 12 Years Later

Here’s a look at the installation in 2010 and updated project photos taken in May 2022. The GEOPAVE system still looks great and is performing as expected.