ELK GROVE, Calif. — California's changing climate is producing hotter, longer and more frequent heat waves, some cities in the area are turning to something called ‘cool pavement’ to help mitigate the high temperatures.
Also known as heat-reducing pavement, ‘cool pavement’ is a light-colored coating applied to pavement “that doesn't absorb as much sunlight during the day and so then doesn't radiate as much heat at nighttime,” said Carrie Whitlock.
She’s Elk Grove’s Strategic Planning and Innovation Program Manager and helps run the city’s ‘cool pavement’ pilot program. The city treated the pavement in a parking lot next to Old Town Plaza in 2021 and, last year, treated a segment of trail.
“We're still analyzing the trail segments. We saw with the parking lot that it could actually make a fairly significant, probably 20- to 30-degree difference in terms of the surface temperature, especially on really hot days,” Whitlock said.
ABC10 wanted to test this for ourselves, so we took an infrared thermometer out to the parking lot at 4 p.m. Thursday, when the temperature was 107 degrees. The untreated, regular pavement gave a reading of about 138 degrees. The ‘cool pavement’ reading was more than 10 degrees cooler, around 126 degrees.
“It just really can make a big difference in making the environment a lot cooler, especially during these really extreme heat events,” Whitlock said.
And hotter cities are testing it out, too, including Phoenix, where neighbors tell ABC10’s sister station KPNX they notice a difference.
“It is cooler, walking down these areas,” said one Phoenix resident who lives on a street treated with a ‘cool pavement’ coating.
Elk Grove is collaborating to study the effects of ‘cool pavement’ with the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District and City of Davis, which received a $24 million dollar federal grant back in April to fund its own Cool Pavement Project. Davis’ website lists more than a dozen priority segments of road that are set to be treated.
As for Elk Grove, State Senator Angelique Ashby just announced a $440,000 grant for the city, “for us to really do a rollout plan for how would we, where would we do this throughout the city — along our trails, sidewalks, parking lots, transit stops — in addition to additional shading, additional tree-plantings and other heat-mitigation strategies,” Whitlock said.
Elk Grove, Davis and the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District are working to secure a tool that will measure the ambient temperature several feet above the pavement. They want to test whether the ‘cool pavement’ treatment makes a difference for how pedestrians and cyclists feel in the heat.
"Our overall goal is to make our transportation system — regardless of the weather — accessible for everybody," Whitlock said. "If they want to walk, bike, use transit, that they're still comfortable and able to do that, regardless of what the temperature is outside."
WATCH ALSO:
