WW State Park Stream Project-

[brntrout]

I drove by the stream project today in WW State Park which is just downstream of the Hwy 74 bridge. Unfortunately, all the bank sloping and just erosion control blankets did not stop an almost "total washout" of this new project. However, the banks they did rip rap did stay in place for the most part in a few small areas. Again, unfortunately, its the second time they did a project there of similar type that has washed away within the last 10 to 15 years. For those of you who complained to me about this project not being very good because it held no pool depth, was shallow and provided little trout habitat, I guess you won't have to worry about it anymore, its pretty much totally GONE! The area now has straight up and down eroded banks throughout most of its length. Of course, maybe they will spent another several hundred thousand dollars of our money in an attempt to fix it?

ADDED: to be fair, the project we are doing on Garvin Brook also received damage, but 95% of the damage was limited to soil being washed away. There isn't really anything that can be done to stop that from happening when there is a 5 inch rain fall event . That is particularly true when the banks had just been sloped and seed days before the event took place. However, what is important is the banks and structures did not washout because rock was used to make sure that would not happen. The point being is one project is almost a total redo, while Garvin Brook just needs soil put back on the rock and re-seeded. What it boils down too is the fact rock does not turn to liquid mud and wash away like dirt does.

[brntrout]

I'm now hearing the contractor is getting the blame for this project washing out. I find this laughable because its the fault of the people who designed the project who did not have a project supervisor on site to oversee the project installation was done correctly. Have you ever seen any major construction project where there wasn't a project supervisor on site to ensure everything went as designed/planned?

Many construction projects sometimes have two or even three supervisor on site so these types project failures do not happen.

I'm sure the contractor thought he was doing everything right because there was no one there supervising to tell him otherwise.

[jrs]

Here's a photo from WWSP. You can see in the first photo where the riprapped bank was and how the recent storm carved it back 5 or 10 feet. Now there's a high dirt bank that will continue to erode and deposit sediment I to the stream.

You can also see towards the top of the photo where there is some riprapped bank still mostly in place. The bank seems far too steep to me, about 1x1 slope. Not sure why they didn't slope it more to allow flood waters to disperse and energy to dissipate. There is plenty of room there as there is grassy flat between the old channel and the revised channel.

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[S.T.Fanatic]

I guess maybe some warranty lingo should go into new contracts. If the contractor cant warranty the project they obviously don't trust the design and installation. It's not like this was a 500 year flood event. There are plenty of years where spring runoff produces as much water. Like mentioned above, if sloped properly it MAY have survived even with the (to my understanding) lack of rock holding the soil in place. I have lived within 10 miles of the park my entire life and have never even considered trying to fish there. By the looks of it, there isn't much reason for me to check it out now either.

[brntrout]

Bottom line, soil is water soluble, rock is not. The only way you could just slope soil banks without using rip rap is to have the wet channel dimension so wide the project would cease to be a viable trout habitat project because it would then be shallow, silt laden with no pool depth. However, it would make a beautiful sterile meandering flood control project.