Site stewardship is an important factor in maintaining a sustainable site and one often ignored by builders of single family homes and home improvement contractors. During construction site stewardship is achieved through the use of soil controls. These include tracking pads, silt fence, straw bales and non-disturbance zones.
A Tracking pad is a temporary stone pad installed at the street into the project site to prevent equipment or trucks from tracking soil into the roadway. Such a pad is typically required when significant soil disturbance is required to construct the project. Upon completion of soil disturbing activities the tracking pad is removed and existing soils graded and stabilized. Silt fence is filter fabric on stakes. It is installed in a shallow trench and prevents unstable soil from leaving the site during rain events. This prevents loose soils from entering the storm drainage system, neighbor’s property or designated non-disturbance zones. Straw bales are staked to the ground and are used for high volume water runoff areas, such as around storm inlets, to protect the storm drainage system. Non-disturbance zones are simply areas that are not to be touched either physically or by runoff during the construction. Trees in non-disturbance zones are typically fence off following the trees drip line (outer edge of leaves). This is site specific and not always possible.
Soil erosion controls are very important to maintaining our environment and in keeping our storm drainage systems working efficiently. For specific information on Soil Erosion Controls in Monmouth County visit http://www.freeholdscd.org/ and in Ocean County http://www.soildistrict.org/
