Jonas Doerr-
Gustavus is covered in a concrete blanket. Maybe the blanket is a bit scraggly and lets Gustavus’ toes stick out, but it is still there. Roads, sidewalks, and parking lots cover a large portion of our campus.
For most students, most of their time spent at Gustavus is walking on concrete. Aside from the Arboretum, the only chance to walk on anything else is by shortcutting across a field. While it is fortunate for us to have the Arboretum, the sidewalks on the rest of campus are harming our walking health and local biodiversity. Instead of coating our campus with concrete, it should gradually be resurfaced with softer, more natural materials.
The harshness of concrete has been shown to have negative effects on people’s feet, legs, and lower backs. Peter Beech writes in his article in The Guardian, “Hard Living: What Does Concrete Do to Our Bodies?” that people who work long 8-10 hour shifts on concrete often come in for treatment, but the only remedy for their foot and leg problems is to stay off concrete for a time. Beech also writes that runners generally try not to run on concrete because of its damaging effects; the lead marathon trainer for England’s athletics team says landing on the same concrete surface repeatedly “all ends up in the lower back,” causing muscular-skeletal damage.
Of course, the average student walking to class isn’t jogging or taking 8-10 hours. But to avoid the hard impact of walking on concrete, many people wear cushioned shoes with elevated heels. Those elevated heels over time cause the Achilles tendon in the back of the foot to tighten and shrink, according to Dr. Bryan Den Hartog from Twin Cities Orthopedics. As a result of this, he adds, “We believe that a major cause of many foot and ankle problems is due in part to tight calves and Achilles tendons.”
Softer walking surfaces around campus would allow people to wear flatter, less cushioned shoes or even go barefoot. We could replace many of the sidewalks around campus with dirt paths, and woodchips, or even just allow students to form their own paths and take the most efficient route to their classes.
This would also have a positive impact on biodiversity at Gustavus. During the winter, sidewalks require plowing and sand or salt that ends up in the nearby plants. If Gustavus students trudged out their own paths in the snow, like they already do on some parts of campus, this would not be an issue. Sidewalks also are an impervious substance to water, causing rainfall and snowmelt to run off into storm drains, which then carry dirt particles that instead of rejoining the soil head to the Minnesota River to muddy its waters.
Obviously, we can’t remove all of the sidewalks. We need to keep some hard-surfaced paths to allow less mobile people to still move around campus. But we can remove many of the sidewalks and over time convert the rest into a more eco-friendly surface.
All of the roads, sidewalks, and parking lots on Gustavus have the same problem with water runoff. Since rainfall and snowmelt cannot get through it, it necessitates a complex drainage system which ultimately sends pollutants unfiltered into the Minnesota River. Fluids and particles from cars, along with other debris, are swept along with the water.
One solution, implemented in Shoreview, Minnesota, which is near St. Paul, is pervious pavement. Instead of paving with impervious concrete or asphalt, pervious pavement uses pervious asphalt, pervious cement, or interlocking cement to create a hard surface that water can flow through. This removes the need for stormwater drainage systems, and the pavement can also trap many of the pollutants in the water.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), permeable pavements reduce stormwater by 25% to even 100%. They also remove between 67-97% of total suspended solids, around 80% of metals, and about 40% of nutrients in the water. Best of all, this type of pavement can be more affordable than traditional pavement.
The EPA says that in a project in Olympia, Washington, testing the differences between permeable and traditional sidewalks, the permeable pavement was $8 per square foot as opposed to $15 per square foot for the impermeable pavement. While it might not be cost-effective to immediately tear up our campus’ paved surfaces, as they gradually wear out and need repair we can replace them with cheaper, more environmentally friendly materials. And if you’ll indulge me in a small pun, these changes will certainly pave the way for a greener Gustavus.