“We even put up a sign so people know it’s a parking lot,” smiles Serge Lagrange, the mayor of Saint-Martial-le-Mont, a town in the east of Creuse. After two years of work, the parking lot located next to the cemetery was built. This infrastructure is more ecological because it allows rainwater to infiltrate into the ground. A technique that other elected officials came to see this Tuesday, December 3.
From the cemetery gate stretches a strip of tarmac surrounded by grass. “We were wondering where we could park!” reports Sylvain Duquenoix, the mayor of Champsanglard, who came to obtain information for work in his town center. No white band marks the locations to park, it is a choice made by Sylvain Lagrange, the mayor of Saint-Martial-le-Mont: “We didn’t put any markings so that people move around a little and are not always in the same place.” This will prevent holes or grassless areas from forming.
Greener parking…
The part where around fifteen cars can park is not paved. It's a mixture of stone of about four centimeters and earth describes Julien Voisin, head of department at the Attrabilité de la Creuse agency. “Clearly a classic parking lot we will collect rainwater and we will direct it towards a grid to evacuate it into the pipes. Here, the water from the road will go towards the earth-stone before infiltrating. The percentage of earth allows local species to grow.” Grass already covers the ground. Infiltration also allows the soil to eliminate pollutants and thusavoid excessively concentrated discharge of pollution in the river.
Lucie Amadieu
This development also responds to the issues linked to global warming, underlines the mayor of Saint-Martial-le-Mont, Serge Lagrange. “We have more and more floodsso we had to minimize the flow of water.” Below the town, there are several homes: “if the water infiltrates and is stored upstream, it prevents flooding downstream.”
…and less expensive
Allowing water to infiltrate the plot is necessarily less expensive than making a trench and installing pipes, especially since the pipes have a lifespan of around fifty years.”retained the mayor of Champsanglard. This less paved parking lot made it possible tosave around 50,000 euros according to calculations by the mayor of Saint-Martial-le Mont, Serge Lagrange.
In Creuse, three other municipalities are in the process of equipping themselves with parking of this type according to the Attractiveness of Creuse agency: Ahun, Saint-Michel-de-Veisse and Vidaillat.
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