My ten acres have lost ten mature trees and about four times that many schrubs over the last four years we have owned this property. The floodway is 50 feet wide and stream banks are two to six feet high depending on whichside of the "s" curves you examine along the 1000 (yes thousand) feet of stream bed that crosses our land. Neighbors down stream had to clear dirt/stone debris to keep stream from meandering their bridge into oblivion.
That's how bad things got.
We have had some success with contacting local cement contractors and obtaining their concrete scraps to use as rip-rap. Our project fits within the US Army Corps of Engineers blanket permit guidelines for land owners.
Bobcat Jim comes around every so often to move the rip-rap into position along streambanks.
We expect to finish the 2000 feet of streambanks in a few years, but the double "S" bends make that difficult and there is no room to allow the stream to naturally form an "oxbow" and abandon a meander.
Oh, about trees? We are placing some dirt over the top to the rip-rap walls for vegetation, building rip-rap supports around and under threatenend mature trees, and hope to pland stream willows along the rip-rap to help stabilize the rocks.
Any ideas to assist our project? Sam
