Hi All

Sorry for the delay in new postings but LOTS of exciting projects happening!

One you might be interested in is the NEW Belly River Stream Project and Workshop.  Remember the Willow Creek project? 

/watchyourdirt-erosion-control/2009/5/18/willow-creek-site-visit.html

Well the Belly River Workshop will be very similar.  This project is also sponsored by the Alberta Transportation and the engineering by the AMEC office in Calgary.

Project:  The Belly River site is about 2-hours south of Calgary.  The Highway is threatened by slides which are initiated by the Belly River “eating” the toe of the slope.  The river is making an acute bend and meandering into the slide mass. 

 

You can see how this site is perfect for redirectives methods (in this case Rock Vanes were chosen) to give the river a “smoother radius of curvature”.  By stabilizing the toe, we can then go in and repair the landslide.  AMEC has designed some pretty robust geotechnical solutions.  The upstream slopes are being dedicated to Enviromentally-Sensitive and Biotechnical solutions – and these will be the main subjects of the 3-day workshop.  Solutions including Vegetated Reinforced Channels, Brush layering, Live Siltation, Modified Brush Layers, Soil Flapping, Compost Incorporate and many more!!  What is very exciting is we are going to learn about bioengineering and also some of the Sustainable Erosion Control techniques recently developed by Caltrans.  See:  https://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/LandArch/ec/index.htm

The workshop will be completed in mid-October.  The workshop is being coordinated by Neil Little, C-Tep and as far as I know, the workshop is open for more attendees.  The three-day workshop will be held in nearby Waterton, think Glacier National park!!!

More later as I am currently studying the Loire River in France – OK, it’s not work!!

You can reach Angela in my office at 530-247-1600

By the way, the last two photos show how well the Willow Creek project and the downstream Old Man River project have performed over the last few years.