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Education of internal contractor personnel is a key to success. "You need to make sure your dispatchers, your estimators, your plant people understand what porous asphalt is," Huddleston says. "So when the call comes from somebody who wants a porous pavement, your people know how to answer."

And it's critical for a contractor to know how to dispel the common myths about porous asphalt, Huddleston says. Myth number one is that the water will seep through the pavement, saturate the subgrade, and wreak havoc with the asphalt. It's not so. Water passes through the asphalt and into the stone recharge bed where it is stored until the uncompacted subgrade can absorb it. The stone recharge beds make outstanding structural bases and perform equally well whether dry, wet or saturated.

Secondly, freeze-thaw cycles are no problem for porous asphalt. That's because snow and ice form, then melt on the surface, and the water passes completely through the asphalt. Snow and ice don't build up the way they do with dense-graded asphalt.

It's best to keep porous asphalt surfaces clean of sand and dirt, because you don't want to plug the pores. "You should vacuum-sweep them once a year," says Huddleston. "But not everyone does that, and no problems seem to have developed."

Another myth is that porous asphalt won't hold up to heavy loads. It will, and a porous asphalt street project called Pringle Creek in Oregon proves that, says Huddleston. There, construction trucks traveled over the porous asphalt streets and caused no problems.