Land Clearing
Why is forestry mulching a better alternative to grading when clearing land?
Well, let’s be honest. Mulching is not always truly better. However, there are benefits to mulching, such as:
1- Less soil compaction. When working with stormwater ponds or virtually any green space, soil compaction diminishes absorption rate.
2- Maintain fertile top soil. Grading will remove the healthiest layer off your property. Preserving your topsoil is essential to a healthy piece of land.
3- Provide ground cover. Once grading is complete, seeding and straw matting is necessary for erosion protection. However, after mulching, the finished product stabilizes the soil, saving you money.
4- No hauling. A significant cost factor is hauling off material in a land clearing project. When grading, the material that would have been mulched now needs to be hauled away, resulting in trucking fees and a cost for dumping.
Also, as you consider clearing land, make sure that the right sized equipment is used. The right tool for the job effects quality, safety, and time, all of which translates into money for the property owner.
Get a better idea of the right tools and the finished product in this video.
Pond Mowing
Chances are you’re stormwater pond is over grown. Perhaps you haven’t really given it much thouht other than the occasional drive by that causes you some embarrassment. However, did you realize that your local municipality is checking these ponds and giving violations for overgrown stormwater ponds?
Most likely, you look at the steep embankment and realize that mowing the steep slope is hard work and very dangerous. Here’s a safe alternative with Buck Outdoors Stormwater Solutions to maintain an attractive property and prevent fines and violations.
Danger of Corrugated Pipe
Recently, a young child fell into a sink hole caused by failing stormwater pipes. Are you preventing liability with your neighbors and employees by being proactive with stormwater maintenance and inspections?
If your property was built over 30 years ago, there’s a pretty good chance that corrugated metal pipe was used. This pipe, from holding water, eventually begins to rust. Once rust has eaten through the pipe, soil begins to wash into your stormwater system.
The first sign of a problem could be extra sediment in your stormwater pond and nearby streams. Of course, the added sediment into your pond becomes costly to remove, and fines can be connected to polluting the stream with sediment. However, there is a bigger liability. The wash out of soil under ground creates a cavity, or sink hole.
Through routine maintenance and inspections, you increase the chance of finding these problems before costly sediment removal, expensive fines, or endangering your employees and neighbors.
Call Buck Outdoors Stormwater Solutions to establish a maintenance plan for a peace of mind.
Temporary BMPs
Often, when a construction site is completed a few things are overlooked. However, failure to remover all temporary BMPs results in failure of the stormwater structures.
Generally, the first thing to go into a construction site is silt fence. This fence is in place to hold sediment on the construction site. More silt fence is often added around storm drains to prevent sediment from getting into the new stormwater system. The silt fence, and all other temporary BMPs (Best Management Practice), must be in place until the disturbed area is stabilized. Stabilization is the establishment of mulch, straw, or established grass.
Stabilization keeps the soil in place, and once the disturbed area has adequate cover the temporary BMP can be removed. These temporary BMPs must be removed, but are often over looked. The grader misses it, the MS4 regulator misses it and the BMP is simply left. Years later the temporary BMP catches enough sediment that it can clog a drain box.
That is the case here in Columbia, SC. The silt fence held sand and eventually became covered with sediment. To fix the isue, we had to use an excavator, dig out the silt fence and re-stabilize the soil.
This issue was caught during a routine annual inspection. Though the issue was caught during dry weather, Major rain events would be a problem for this site as stormwater was not able to flow off the property. Fortunately, the issue was caught and fixed. Today, the stormwater structures are free and the property is not in danger of flooding during the next rain event.
The Value of Hiring a Stormwater Manager
To care for your stormwater facility requires knowledge and time that most property owners don't have. Buck Outdoor Stormwater Services (B.O.S.S.) removes this headache from property owners. Every stormwater facility is subject to state and local laws. Furthermore, these laws change. Therefore, it's extremely helpful to have a stormwater professional on your team.
Allying with a stormwater professional often reduces inspections and helps with audits. Municipalities are required to inspect stormwater facilities at least every five years and whenever there is a complaint. When stormwater managers properly submit records to the municipality, those reports by a licensed inspector adequately fulfill the inspection requirements for the municipality. Also, DHEC and EPA routinely preform audits on stormwater facilities for Stormwater Pollutant Prevention Plans. Having a stormwater manager on your side means that you have a qualified ally who can represent you during the audit, saving you both time and money.
Furthermore, a stormwater manager will help you protect your reputation and manage risks. Your reputation is invaluable. And when you have a mess in your stormwater facility, your community and clients have to wonder about the quality you find acceptable. Also, having a stormwater system adds a layer of risk to your property. Discharges, vandalism and personal injury are risks that a stormwater manager looks out for.
The bottom line is the bottom dollar. Ultimately, the stormwater manager helps you save the money you work hard for. B.O.S.S. and others who provide stormwater services limit expenses with efficient management practices.
To find out if B.O.S.S. can help you manage your stormwater facility, contact us today.
Protecting Your Home from Stormwater Damage
In a natural environment, storm water runoff is absorbed by soil, evaporates into the atmosphere or flows into bodies of water, such as streams, lakes or rivers. Homeowners may need to recreate the natural environment on their property to address storm water runoff. This includes planting trees and other vegetation, building rain gardens and installing rain barrels or cisterns to collect roof water.
Read more from the article found at TRAVELRS INSURANCE here.
Don't Be Reactive with Stormwater Facilities
Too often, property owners become reactive when it comes to their stormwater system. However, the South Carolina Stormwater Management and Sediment Reduction Act of 1991 requires property owners to actively maintain and inspect their stormwater facilities. Unfortunately, in order to properly manage these systems requires knowledge and time that most property owners do not have.
Regardless, it is not worth it to have a reactive philosophy of managing stormwater facilities. Reactive management is an expensive option that creates an eye sore in the community and is not a responsible approach to our environment. By partnering with a third party stormwater manager, property owners can rest assured that everything is being taken care of properly.
Perhaps you have heard, or experienced yourself, the hassle of receiving a violation and fear of a hefty fine. These are the issues that potentially keep property owners up at night. And as communities grow and enforcement of regulations tighten the chance of experiencing violations and fines increase.
Therefore, hiring a third party stormwater manager, such as Buck Outdoors Stormwater Services, takes away the head ache of complying with the Stormwater Management and Sediment Reduction Act. For example, the Permanent Stormwater Facilities Maintenance Agreement requires that records be kept of routine work and inspections done on the facility. When these records are properly kept and reported to the MS4, inspections from the municipality are much more smoother. Often times, when reports are sent in annually, the MS4 is able to consider the report as an inspection. Meaning, the hassle of inspections and fear of violations are managed for the property owner.
Contact Buck Outdoors Stormwater Services today to see if hiring a third party manager makes sense for you.
Stormwater Management Trending with Rain Barrels/Gardens
New construction in our community means economic stability. However, with more people, buildings and parking lots, the watershed is overwhelmed with stormwater. Fortunately, the new trend of containing stormwater gives Mother Nature much-needed relief. The desire and ability to collect rainwater for future use slows down the emergence of flow into the local watershed.
Photo by schulzie/iStock / Getty Images
Rain barrels have been popular for almost a decade now. Gutter systems on homes are connected to a barrel for later use. However, the trend will begin morphing in the near future as homeowners want an effective system for using their harvested rain and commercial property seeks ways to use harvested rain on a larger scale.
Today, rain barrels can be connected to rain gardens or bioretention gardens. Rain gardens are specfically engineered and constructed to absorb and filter water through healthy plant growth. Using plant growth as filtration provides a more natural and attractive means of managing stormwater systems. Generally, a rain garden is installed to add a beautiful flower garden to the property. However, rain gardens can be used to camouflage the stormwater system, giving the property a more natural look and feel rather than a large, fenced-in, overgrown area.
Similar to rain gardens are rainwater irrigation systems. Rain barrels connect to an irrigation system. The irrigation systems uses the harvested rainwater, then uses city water as needed. Rainwater irrigation systems are a solution that also reduces water bills and allows rainwater to be absorbed through the lawn.
Temporary containers are now being used in larger constructions. Large containers are being placed on properties to hold water rather than letting it overwhelm the watershed. This is a popular solution in large parking lots as durable structures sit underneath the parking lot itself. In new construction, this has become the way to go. Developments now require less space and the over bearance of water off of impermeable pavement into the watershed is stopped. Generally, these containers have filters to absorb pollutants. The maintenance requires a stormewater management company to change the filters and pump the containers on a regular basis.
6 Ways to Protect Water Quality
When stormwater flows through the watershed, it picks up pollutants on it's way. The rain in your yard carries off pesticides and fertilizer. The stormwater then continues onto the road where trash and oil adds to the intoxication. By the time a drop of rain reaches the ground water, it has many opportunities to be polluted.
Contact us. Buck Outdoors repairs and maintains designated stormwater areas ain is licensed for CEPSCI.
Most likely your neighborhood has a designated stormwater area. When managed properly, stormwater areas protect the watershed. Hiring a specialist to maintain your stormwater areas is essential. However, here are a few steps you can take to protect water quality before the rain runoff gets to the stormwater area.
- Use chemicals in accordance to labels.
- Pick up pet waste in your yard.
- Use rain barrels or other rain harvesting devices.
- Change automobile oil where the oil can be properly contained.
- Wash automobiles where water can be recycled or on the yard (never in the driveway).
- Pick up yard debris.
If you live in the upstate of South Carolina, feel free to contact Buck Outdoors to see if we can assist your property and protect the watershed.
Pest Control
Pest control sounds like a simple part of stormwater management. Today, property owners do not want to be part of a Zika virus story and view pest control as a serious part of their stormwater management. When Buck Outdoors manages a designated stormswater area, we develop a pest control strategy based on the goal to either prevent pests, suppress pests, or eradicate pests.
Preventing a pest means there are no existing signs of a particular pest, say kudzu. Realizing that neighboring properties have kudzu invasion, we will implement a simple plan to prevent the problem from existing. Pest prevention is easier and cheaper than dealing with the pest. For instance, with kudzu rather than applying chemicals, we would changing the mowing routine to prevent a kudzu take over.
Suppressing pests mean there is an existing problem and the tolerance level for the pest does not require complete eradication of the pest. For instance, water fowl may be present on a body of water. The property owners may appreciate having a pair of geese at the far end of the pond. Buck Outdoors then implements a plan to suppress the geese population and encourage the pair to stay in the preferred area of the pond.
Eradicating pests mean there is an existing problem and there is no tolerance for the pest. Rarely is eradication the goal for outdoor management, because it is difficult and expensive.
As Buck Outdoors assists with pest control, it is essential to monitor the pest and avoid harmful effects. Routine scouting in the designated stormwater area allows the property owner to be aware of the type of pests present and the extreme of each pest. Once a tolerance level is reached, Buck Outdoors will lead in suppressing the pests.
Whether insects, vegetation or water fowl, improper pest control can cause more problems than the pest itself. For instance a designated stormwater area with a high weed population should not be broadcasted with pesticide, killing all vegetation present and polluting the watershed. Buck Outdoor consider the complete system where the problem exists and makes a point to address problems with a holistic approach.
Buck Outdoors is a coveted ally with property owners in the upstate of South Carolina. Find out if Buck Outdoors is the right fit to help you with pest control in your stormwater area by connecting with us today.