By the time this newsletter reaches you, and after a long process of decision-making by the Land and Building Committee, Executive Committee, and Board, the entrance, driveway, and circle at our building will have been paved. We had hoped to do this over the summer but could not finalize the decision in time. Luckily, our paving company was able to get the job done before the onset of winter weather.
Now for the technical details: The paving will be done using a synthetic organic polymer called Soil Sement. It is produced by a company called Midwest Industries, Inc. It will use our current gravel base plus finer gravel-y dust (screenings) to give us a hard, plowable surface that is similar in texture to a rough grade of asphalt. It is somewhat more expensive than our lowest bid for asphalting the same area but it is supposed to be less likely to develop potholes and, unlike asphalt, repairs are suppose to enhance the integrity of the surface.
We chose this material over asphalt because it has lower environmental impact. Most notably, it does not contribute petroleum products to the aquifer as it degrades. Petroleum byproducts from asphalt are a significant contaminant in the Chesapeake Bay.
We also considered concrete, which was prohibitively expensive, and another material produced by Midwest Industries, called Enviro Kleen. We may still use Enviro Kleen for the remainder of the parking lot but deferred our decision on that until we have been able to do more research on its use in situations comparable to ours in terms of weather and use.
The Land and Building Committee originally looked at porous paving materials but discovered that our clay soil base meant that our runoff situation would not be improved with these materials.
Many thanks to the Land and Building Committee under the leadership of Michael FIne and Scott Arnold, to the Landscape Subcommittee under the leadership of Cheryl Kollin and to our landscape architect Mark LaPierre for their work in getting the paving proposal to the Exec Committee and Board. Many thanks to Sheila Feldman for her patience, tenacity, and persistence; to the executive committee for considering and reconsidering and reconsidering again the questions of how to pave and what to pave; to the Board for hearing more about paving in the last 3 months than most people hear in a lifetime; and thank you to our legal team of Scott Arnold, Steve Widdes, and Garry Grossman for ironing out the details that got us to this point.
Shalom uv’racha (Peace and blessing),
Judy Gelman, President