 My focus for my work is erosion semi-control. That's what I do most of the time. I do work in wetlands and permitting But so it's kind of we're a little bit backwards today most of the talks you've heard today are What are we getting at the end? This is what you're doing while you're doing it Does anybody in the room deal with the North Dakota or federal? construction general permit It's gonna be really boring for all of you then You there are no charts there are no numbers in my presentation So it's a good way to just kind of just you can zone out for the next 25 minutes and you'll be fine Engineers in the room. You might be able to keep up I try to make that joke because I'm a biologist and studying to get an engineering degree, but So what I'm gonna talk to you today is basically the things that we Expect to see while you're building these things you're you have a permit That says all right, you're gonna put a pipeline in you have to control erosion and sediment while you're building it You you can't just bring everything at the end. So And it's not just we're gonna put silt fence on the entire site Or we're gonna put the topsoil berm or the subsoil berm On both sides and leave it until the till we're done push everything back in the hole and then stabilize it We can't do that or let's say we cannot do that So i'm gonna go through some of the things that we talked about in our erosion and sediment control course I know there's at least three people in this room that have taken the course with me Sorry, you get to sit through it again. I guess it's your choice. You're in the room But so this is a very brief overview of the things you need to look for while you're building a project So some of the existing conditions You need to understand your soils obviously we've talked about that a lot today my focus on soils is not The horizon things like that. It's more what's that soil going to do while you're in the construction Are you going to have a lot of sand? Are you going to have dust issues? Are you going to have a lot of clay? Are you going to have track out issues? Are you going to be moving material off your site? How is that going to react? What's your topography on your site? It was said earlier in one of the presentations that we like to do one application of one thing through the entire job Well, that's nice if your job is the same slope Same soil type everything but a lot of our our projects. We don't have that We've long linear projects that cross multiple waterways across multiple different topographies We have to know what those things are and then what's your hydrology? What water do you have on your site? Where is it leaving? What's coming into your site? This picture actually is a waste area that we had on the project. We had to cut a butte down off highway 22 And you can see it kind of got away away from us. I was the only one dumb enough to get close enough to take that picture Everybody else was like 100 yards away in the pickup, but So some of the other things we look for are outfalls and water bodies. Where's your site drained to? How close to disturbance going to be to where that draining to so what can you do in the meantime to protect that? Um, what protections are required? This is actually going to be a lot bigger now The federal permit just was just released for construction general permits that now says if you discharge to uh, your dewatering discharges to a Tier one two or two two and a half three or Other listed water body for sediment suspended solids things like that you have to do benchmark testing So you have to do daily testing now on those projects That's a big thing for construction because we've never had to do that before So you need to understand where these sites draining to so you know what protections you might need Um, I will try to get you out of here by four. So one reason why I'm talking really fast Uh, if you don't if I don't get you out of here by four, you can just walk out. I'm fine with that. Um The other things considers your slopes Like I said, we have long linear jobs. Those slopes change throughout the project um This also will affect how soon you need to stabilize certain things Uh the permits in the state of north dakota Say that if your site if you're if an area your site is three to one or steeper You have seven days to stabilize that once you're done in that area If it's um less than three to one then it's 14 days How close is that to the right away lines? So do you need to be working all the way up to the edge of that property boundary that you have a either a temporary construction easement Or on our side, we generally follow our right away. So Um, what can you do if you don't need to disturb it then don't disturb it? Again, what's coming into the project? We had a lot of problems especially here in town when we were redoing 22 Because when we were redoing 22, it was right through the heart of the boom And what else was going on? A lot of other construction activities were going on right next to our right of ways Which was then dumping material into us. So we had to figure out what are we going to do to keep their material out of ours? Uh, where are your points of egress? So where is your track out issues going to be? So if you come out onto a paved road surface, you have to clean that up every day So we had to understand that And then your impacts two are from the outside um Three really fast ways to get an inspection from either the epa or the deq Not control your dust not control your track out not control your trash Because if people have dust or trash blowing into their yard, they're going to complain If they have to drive their shiny new car through your dirt, they're going to complain So those are the three things you got to watch out for The other thing is environmentally sensitive areas Uh, if you work in a water body, especially in the state of North Dakota You may have spawning restrictions We do a lot of bridge work We cannot work in certain water bodies between April 1st and June 15th We're just not allowed. It's because of spawning and things like that protecting the habitat You cannot work on a bridge and not impact the water body Doesn't happen So you have to do it in a way that you minimize that impact So a lot of our work we have to put cofferdams in well ahead of that spawning restriction Once that cofferdam is in we can work inside that cofferdam We're no longer in the river So we can work inside that cofferdam during that spawning restriction So that comes back to the phasing on how they're how you're going to phase your project Threatened endangered species. Um, recently I've heard there's talking about listing a couple small minnows chubs In state of North Dakota. We haven't had to deal with that We do have to deal with bats We have to deal with piping plovers Some of the butterflies We do have Those big white birds that taste like chicken whooping crane We have those generally contractors whenever I ask if you have a whooping crane problem or if you've seen one They just stare at their shoes. They've never seen one I had one contractor that had three shotgun shells empty shotgun shells at the outside of his con There's a construction trailer and I asked him I said so I see he had a whooping crane problem He's like not anymore um Other thing is cultural sites and avoidance areas. We have area night issues in state things. You don't want to be digging into Uh cultural sites. You don't want to be digging into those You want to make sure that you're staying out of those things So there might be areas that you won't even get into that you may have to mark out on your project So you don't have that issue Probably the biggest one The biggest consideration is your phasing This is the one that we as a dot we let the contract control In a vast majority of our projects as they're phasing is how are they going to do that project? How are they going to approach that project? But that's probably the biggest thing for erosion sediment control What's going to be done first and should that be the thing that's done first? For our projects, if you're working on a box culvert, does it make sense to do the box culvert in april or september? Host the time in september because that box culverts are going to be dry Especially on this side of the state You don't want to be working in water when it's flowing if you can get in there when it's dry that makes sense But if you phase your job wrong, you're going to run into a lot of problems And then should things be required due to the nature of the work? I was working on a project I went up to review a project on north side of bismarck Where they were putting in a roundabout because we have a We love roundabouts right now. I don't know if you guys notice this, but they're putting them everywhere There they put one on 1804 north side of bismarck and on the north end of washington And they were redoing a miles worth of roadway just south of that roundabout And that when I got there they were working on that piece of road They weren't they hadn't touched the roundabout yet. They weren't doing anything. I reviewed their stormwater plant In their stormwater plant it specifically said that they're not going to be doing any concrete work Well, I don't know if you've driven on our roundabouts They're all concrete His roundabouts don't hold up if they're asphalt generally so I knew there was something wrong That swip should have said yes, we will have concrete work But their swip said no, we don't have any concrete work on this project This is a plan for a reason they're supposed to be planning ahead for these things They may not need to know exactly what they're going to do with the concrete But they need to be aware of that and so you need to know what is going to be on that project from start to finish for your erosion control It's a big misconception I guess And actually this was something in my classes that i'm taking for uh, civil engineering I had an intro to civil engineering course It was a one credit class that they basically just give you the a to make you feel better for failing other classes But it was the question in the book was what is the most popular erosion control on a construction project And according to the book it was silt fence Silt fence is not an erosion control There are two different things on a project erosion control and sediment control Erosion control is keeping the dirt in place. That is the best line of defense that you have on a construction project Keep the dirt where it's supposed to be You don't want to be losing your top soil. You don't want to be losing your material that you're trying to work with So keep it where it's supposed to be That may mean minimizing your served area As a dot we had a love affair of allowing a contractor to go right away to right away line and strip the entire project And There were a couple contractors when I first started 10 years ago I could tell when I drove onto the project whose project it was I didn't have to look at the plan set Because the entire 20 miles would be stripped and everybody'd be working on the box cover And there wasn't a single thing on the project and we can't do that Um, like I said phasing the construction activity. That's Probably the best way to do that is maintaining those materials so you don't have open areas Controlling your stone water flowing on to and through the Project because if it goes into your project, it has to come out clean It can't dirty the water as it goes through and let it leave your project And then stabilizing those soils properly and stabilizing and making sure you're protecting your slopes Um, like I said that comes back to that seven or 14 days For your sediment control, that's your second line of defense That is once that sediment is moving once it's left where it's supposed to be Now you've got to catch it So that's your silt fence. That's your fiber rolls Those are the things that the water is going to have to flow through To drop that sediment out your storm drain inlet protection So I know a lot of you guys don't work in towns we do so we have to make sure we're protecting those storm drain inlets Um, one thing especially if you're anywhere near roadways culverts ditch bottoms storm drains Those are all waters of the state If you live in the state of north dakota, the gander on the side of your house Is the water of the state Based on the definition that the north dakota state has It is a conveyance of water inside the state of north dakota public or private So you have to protect it as such And we have to do the same thing so all of our centerline pipes all of our approach culverts. We have to protect those Um, you want to maintain sediment on site control your dewatering practices Establish your stabilized construction exits And entrances and then obviously you have to inspect and maintain everything you put in has to be inspected and maintained Temporary or permanent cover This is one thing as we were sitting as I was sitting here today Watching pictures of pipeline installations and things like that. I was kind of you know, my my head was itching because You see a pipeline And you see the dirt You don't see anything else That's something that the permits do not allow If a soil stockpile is sitting there for more than seven or 14 days depending on how steep you stacked it You have to stabilize it We have to do the same thing on our projects So if areas of temporarily permanently ceased activity, then we have to stabilize that And includes graded slopes pond embankments ditches berm soil stockpiles The only three things you won't have to stabilize are rock piles Concrete piles or sand piles because they figure those are already stabilized Everything else has to be stabilized within seven to 14 days If you're on federal lands, it gets worse Every if you're over five acres it goes to seven out seven days does across the board doesn't matter what the slope is So if you're on one of the tribal lands And that's or if you're in Mexico New Hampshire Massachusetts the guide a whole just got primacy so they're no longer under EPA, but If you have any offsite accumulations, so if you have sediment that's left your site You are required to go pick that up Only time you're not Required to pick it up as if the landowner says you're not allowed access So you have to make sure that you go out and pick anything up Um when I was doing inspections in Missouri, we had some pipelines come through And it was a hard thing for some of the guys on the on the projects to understand That they don't get the farm field on both sides They get their easement Their easement is your boundary So if you go outside your easement that is now an offsite accumulation So if you stack your material On that easement line anything that goes off of that is now a violation You've actually violated your permit so Controlling that material is a big thing You have to have a plan in place to clean this stuff up And your stormwater pollution prevention plan that you have for your project has to be modified because obviously you're doing something You shouldn't be doing And then probably the last thing Then I know for a long time for the DOT was the last thing that we ever did was final stabilization you have to have a plan in place of how you're going to bring your site back to 70 of pre-existing vegetation um There are three methods in the state of North Dakota The 70 of pre-existing vegetation So you put the seed mulch in the ground That will get you to 70 vegetation And you wait until it gets there Now that doesn't mean that it's 70 percent of the project that means 100 percent of the project has been vegetated and it's 70 percent of the density of what it was to begin with The other thing is bringing it back to the farmland use if you have a borrow pit or something else in a crop field You've got a contract with the with the Uh farmer that allows you to go and get material Once you put that back you do not have to seed and mulch that you put it back to the Crop ground that it was and you're done You don't have to go back to 70 of pre-existing The last one is the air exemption or what I like to call a three year rule. This one is the one we use It, uh, basically says that if you're in an area of the state That it gets less than 20 inches of rainfall annually Then you're allowed to terminate your permit If you've installed all the seed bed and mulch and permanent devices To get to 70 within three years without active maintenance So you don't have to bring out equipment and fix something basically Our mo u with the deq allows us to use it on every part of the state so The vast majority of the state still falls under these underneath this requirement The only parts that don't they're like the red river valley and there's a hole in sergeant county That gets more rain than everybody else don't know why But those are the only areas you can't use this in so out here this rule applies You don't have to get the 70 vegetation to terminate those permits What we don't want to see is what you see in this picture We don't want to see the black fabric flopping in the breeze in the grass We've all seen it Those are the two things that's one of the two things that you should never see on the at the end of a project is silt curtain and silt fence Because those two things are never going to be permanent how many times have you seen it? Drive by you see that yellow banana floating in the water. Yeah It's not supposed to be there. We shouldn't have it in there For the dot we figured out We needed a way To make sure that this was going to happen on our project so everything that I just talked about was going to get done We had a permit for I think the first permits were in the early 90s that came out The dot I don't think started getting them to the early 2000s We're a little slow on the uptake But we started getting permits, but we weren't really complying with them And so we've developed a special revision that requires an erosion control supervisor It has to be a employee of the prime contractor So they can't say that a subcontractor is their erosion control supervisor It provides that onus that Yes, this is our job because that was one of the main things that I would Have an issue with when I came on a project when I first got here Was it was always somebody else's problem? It is everyone's problem on our projects that erosion control needs to be handled by everybody But we wanted one point of contact with that prime to say this is the person that's going to handle erosion control on your job They had to be familiar with the installation maintenance and removal of the erosion semi control measures The requirements of the slip the plans to permit special revisions specifications Uh competent to supervise personnel. That's a hard one. Um And they had to be certified through our program. We require three people For the dot on every dot permitted project to be certified Through our program. Now, that's the erosion control supervisor for the prime If they have an erosion control sub the supervisor for the sub And then the project engineer The reason for that is we wanted everybody to have the same information We want everybody to be playing off the same playbook. So everybody understands this is the rules that you have to follow The erosion control supervisor is supposed to be on site to provide the erosion so erosion semi control measures And be on site to supervise their installation maintenance or removal and we use es cm said of bmp BMP is best management practice. Yes, cm is erosion semi control measure Today's best management practice is tomorrow's piece of shit basically So There's no reason to use that term as far as i'm concerned. I will still screw it up I still say bmp, but they're erosion semi control measures um You need to update the swip that person is the one that's going to be updating the swip to somar pollution branch and plan both the narrative and the illustrative sections we'll talk about that in a second And uh proposed changes to the project engineer They are required to be on site within 24 hours. The reason that's in there is because sometimes projects They have multiple projects in a certain area. They want one person doing two or three jobs That's fine as long as they can get to each job And they are the ones that are going to be submitting documentation to our project engineers So that being said i'll go through real quick the two main components of a stormwater plan It's illustrative in the narrative sections The illustrative section is the one that everybody likes to do or well if they have to do it This is the one they're okay with doing it's because they're the pictures. They're the maps It's the drawings. It's marking down on the map where you put something in where you installed something Um a lot of this on our projects we give them We give them where we think they're going to need certain things whether it be five-year-old silk fence whatever Um details of how they're supposed to be installed drawings of how it's supposed to be installed that sort of thing The hard part is the narrative section The narrative section are the means and methods That's where the contractor has to take it and say this is what we're going to do on this project to make sure that this stuff happens Also the plan notes and the environmental commitments that we've already complied or said we're going to comply with through the term of that project I've seen a lot of swips in the past 15 years They there's a lot of issues with them Not developing ones probably the first one you have to have it if you have a permit Um gotten a lot better with that. I've gone out to projects and they've handed me two pages and I hand it back to them And um, it's these are fairly large documents. They're not going to be something really small um Missing required sections like I said before if you know you're going to have something you need to have it in your Swift Not having the maps and illustrations. So you show where everything is Um The estm is not designed to a two-year 24 hour storm event That one's gotten a little easier because the deq has finally come out and said As long as you show that it's standard industry practice, then you're fine Having a weak chain of responsibility section the thing with a permit It says if you're doing something on a project and it's not clear in the slip whose responsibility it is It's automatically everybody's responsibility on that project So if you're controlling that project and you have a subcontractor that's doing something for you You need to detail that out. So it explains this is who's responsible for this Not being signed as far as the EPA is concerned. If it wasn't signed it doesn't exist Uh, no one's no inspection report. So they're not doing their inspections like you're supposed to be doing And then a cookie cutter slip And the way I like to explain a cookie cutter slip is basically regurgitating the permit I've had people come to me and say here's my slip for the project. I'm going to use it on every project we have Can't do that And generally what those swips entail is somebody went in To every requirement in the permit and rewrote the requirement to say we're going to do this And so it doesn't say how they're going to do it Is that's what the slip is supposed to do on a project is explain how you're going to meet those requirements There is an art to writing these things You have to be clear and concise And you don't want to avoid as needed when required because my as needed is going to be different than yours You're going to come in and say well, it needs to be required at this point And I'm going to say well, I think it should be different than that So it needs to be specific but not too specific Um, I like to use the example of track out because everybody can visually understand that The track out is when you bring material off your project onto a paved roadway Example we see a lot is just what you see there track out will be cleaned up every day using a scoop shovel in a bucket It's fairly straightforward, right fairly simple It's going to be done every day Using a scoop shovel in a bucket not hard Then this happens If you can't tell this is northwest Bismarck You can see by the date in the corner It's july 3rd So what do you think is going to happen in this neighborhood tomorrow? A lot of barbecues things like that. This is not my neighborhood. I do not make this much money There's a lot of upset people now This guy with the forward is upset because he had to get his neighbor chevy to pull him out of the driveway Just just angry people So who do you think they called? They called the deq This is actually a deq picture that dallas grossman from deq took If you look really hard You can see the guy with the scoop shovel You're right there by that tree If you look really really hard you can see his cell phone in his hand and he's calling his wife and saying he's coming home because he quit Because he ain't doing this shit no more so obviously That's not going to work Track out with the scoop shovel in the bucket cleaning it up isn't going to work The first major issue is why the hell did that happen in the first place? That should never have gotten to that point Especially in an area where you're having to deal with those people Um, so what are some of the improvements we can make? Track out pat that'd be probably the first thing I would do to remedy the issuance in the problem make sure You might have one Ever seen somebody drive around one? They do that all the time Because they don't want to have to drive over it because it's shaky. Well, that's the point But maybe that'll prevent that sediment from coming out The next thing they need to do after they clean up the the road and what they ended up using was a snow plow To clean that up because there was no way scoop shovel in the bucket was going to work They need to come back to this and say what do we need to change in here? so maybe We don't want to do it every day Because what happens tomorrow when that's been fixed and there's no track out Your swip says you're going to do it every day So you better have somebody out there with a scoop shovel in the bucket every day But you could say we're going to inspect it every day and if it's observed we will clean it up and maybe we have Scoop shovel in a bucket. We have a skid steer. We have a brush. We have some sort of broom equipment Whatever you have on site you could list out all those things Those are some of the things that you could do in your swip to say and it covers everything instead of Nailing yourself down to just using a scoop shovel in the bucket Now like I said, there's an art to writing these things the EPA has two example swipes. They're decent I have never seen a slip. I cannot poke a hole into because they're very subjective I will give you an example of something that comes from one of the EPA swips I'm going to read this So just sit back and enjoy The exits will be inspected weekly and after storm events are heavy use The exits will be maintained a condition that will prevent tracking or flowing a sediment onto 6th avenue This could require adding additional crushed stone to the exit All sediment tracks spilled dropped or washed onto 6th avenue will be swept up immediately and hauled off site for disposal at Middletown landfill Sediments will be swept up from the anti-tracking pad at least weekly or more often if necessary If excess sediment has clogged the pad the exit will be top dressed with new crushed stone The replacement of the entire pad might be necessary when the pad becomes completely filled with sediment The pad will be reshaped as needed for drainage and runoff control Broken road payment as a result of construction activities on roadways immediately adjacent to the project site will be repaired immediately The stone anti-tracking pad will be removed before the sub grade of the payment is applied to the parking lot That removes stone and sediment from the pad will be hauled off site and disposed of at Middletown landfill Now That was a lot more words I would argue that that is worse Than the original statement that they had Because if you read through this we'll go back to the first part Just some key points All sediment tracks spilled dropped or washed onto 6th avenue will be swept up immediately and hauled off site for disposal at Middletown landfill What does that say? That says you are going to watch the entirety of 6th avenue From the when it starts to when it begins. It doesn't say near your construction site It doesn't say between these two blocks. It says the entirety of 6th avenue and at any time a piece of dirt drops on it You're going to clean it up And then where are you going to take it? You're going to take it to a landfill. What moron drives dirt to a landfill? I've never seen anybody that says yeah, I'm going to haul my dirt to the landfill. That's that sounds like a good plan No, you're going to put it back on your site um some of the other things Sentiment will be swept from the anti-tracking pad at least weekly or more often if necessary when's it necessary the I like this one Broken road pavement as a result of construction activities on roadways immediately adjacent to the project site will be repaired immediately Please define the word immediately for me because you've used it twice in the same sentence with two completely different definitions So even if you put in the definition of the word immediately into your slip, you've got to define it twice now And then try to figure out which one you're using So again, there are an art to writing these things And it's unfortunately this is the document that No one wants to do on a project But i'll tell you right now. These are the easiest violations to prove Because I could take that document into a court of law and I can say you either did or did not do this And if you have two sites for one right next to the other both of them Look the same, but there's been sediment discharged and they can't tell which one did it The guy with the better documentation is going to win Hands down every time Because he has something on paper that says this is what I did