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ITD gets early start on erosion, sediment control near Mountian Home

Keeping soil where it should be, and not over or in the wrong place under a highway, is at the heart of work recently conducted along U.S. 20, from Mountain Home toward Fairfield.

Carl Vaughn, new foreman of District 3’s Mountain Home Maintenance area, could see a potential problem with erosion and sediment control along U.S. 20 because of fires in the area.

After a recent rain, crews noticed that in several locations severe erosion was taking place and that, in one location, storm water threatened to flood the road. Concern also focused on areas where sediment-laden water was crossing under the highway through small culverts.

Lacking a crystal ball, Vaughn could not be sure when the federal government shutdown would end and agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service would begin their own reseeding.

“Since there is such a small window of opportunity before winter weather to reseed, we took it upon ourselves to help reduce the erosion along U.S. 20 caused by the Pony and Elk fires,” Vaughn said.

By being proactive and beginning the reseeding efforts now to help prevent erosion, plugged culvert pipes or closed roads later.

Thanks to calm conditions on Oct. 3, the reseeding work took place by Mountain Home maintenance workers with help by Road Crew 4 from the Idaho Department of Correction.

“Their six-man crew walked several miles that day up and down burnt hillsides, over rocks and ditches with their seed spreaders applying Basin Big Sagebrush,” Vaughn explained. “They covered the area with seed at the astonishing rate of .09 pounds per acre.”

Vaughn had a plan for sediment control, too.

Because there was no way to control a whole slope, the sediment-control plan was to place fiber “wattles” where it was obvious that water was running off the slope. Then, weed-free straw bales were installed where water was concentrated in roadside ditches leading up to the culverts.

Both efforts are intended to slow the flows and to capture some of the sediment before it reaches the culverts.

“I provided him with some standard drawing information and then he put his crew to work,” said Caleb Lakey, ITD environmental engineer. “I think that it was only maybe a week later that he had the whole thing completed.”