Because that is the order that matters
The proof, right up front
Six sites from the last two seasons, photographed in the weather that mattered. An erosion-control portfolio is a weather record — here is ours.
Erosion & sediment control
Silt fence, wattles, inlet protection, slope blanket and stabilized entrances — installed before earthwork and maintained after every rain. The permit is a maintenance schedule wearing a hard hat, and we run it like one.
Stormwater earthwork
Sediment basins, berms, diversions and swales cut to the drawing: risers and trash racks set, outlets riprapped, banks seeded and blanketed. Water leaves the site at the rate the permit says, carrying nothing it did not bring.
Ponds & permanent water
Farm ponds and retention ponds with clay cores keyed and packed in six-inch lifts, spillways to the hundred-year line, and a first-fill visit in the contract. A pond is erosion control that lasts a century, if the core is honest.
The Stillwater position
The permit stays clean
An erosion-control plan is a promise made to a watershed, and somebody has to keep it after the dirt stops moving. We hold the inspections through closeout — weekly, after every half-inch of rain, and once more for the stabilization photo — because the fine is never as expensive as the reputation.
The zero-violation clause
If a notice of violation names a control we installed or maintain, the repair, the fine and the re-inspection are ours. Eleven years and two hundred and six permits in the watershed; the clause has never been used.
The sequence
Before, during, after the rain
The order of operations is the whole discipline: controls in before earthwork, inspections through it, and stabilization that outlives the invoice. Everything else is just dirt.
Permit
Plan & paper
The SWPPP drawn, the permit pulled, the inspection schedule printed on the job board. The plan is a document; the board is where it becomes behaviour.
Day 1
Perimeter first
Fence, entrance, inlet protection — in and photographed before a track turns. The inspector always looks at the edges first; so does the rain.
Phase
Earthwork in windows
Cuts phased so no slope sits exposed longer than the blanket can cover it; basins built early enough to catch their own construction.
Every rain
Inspect & log
After each half-inch and weekly regardless: fence patched, basins dredged, dams checked, log signed. The log is the job’s memory and the inspector’s favourite reading.
Closeout
Stabilize & verify
Seed, blanket and the coverage photo the permit requires — then the record bound and filed, and the watershed one site heavier and none the muddier.
For the record
The watershed district’s copy
Our district audits every site after every big rain, and Stillwater’s pages are the ones I flip past — fence taut, basins dredged, logs signed and filed before I ask. In eleven years I have never written them up. There are two outfits in the watershed I can say that about, and I am quoting one of them.
Why the clause survives
The day after the storm
A control that only works in dry weather is landscaping. Ours are built for the half-inch Friday: fence buried six inches and taut, basins sized to the contributing area, outlets armored, and a crew that shows up Saturday with a shovel and the log book. That is the entire secret — there is no other one.
Straight answers
Asked at permit time
The four that decide most erosion-control scopes. If yours is not here, the office answers seven to five — the voice on it has been rained on professionally.
Do I really need a permit for one acre?
In the Mire Slough watershed, yes — one disturbed acre triggers coverage, and the district counts disturbance, not construction. We draw the SWPPP, pull the coverage and run the inspection schedule; the paperwork is a service, not a fee.
When does the silt fence go in — and when may it come out?
In before the first earthwork, out after vegetation passes the coverage test — usually seventy percent established growth across the slope. Between those dates it is inspected after every half-inch of rain and weekly regardless, and patched the same day it sags.
What does a sediment basin cost that a pond does not?
Less, and it is temporary. A basin is a dug basin with a riser and a trash rack, dredged at closeout and either removed or converted; a pond is engineered landscape with a core and a spillway. We build both — one for the permit, one for the property.
Who files the inspection logs?
We do, on our board and in the district’s portal, within twenty-four hours of every inspection — rain or shine, weekly regardless. The logs are the difference between a clean closeout and a letter, and they are the reason our clause has never been used.
Permit-season schedule fills by April · (555) 036-6604 · water@stillwaterground.example
Start with the permit, sleep through the rain
Parcel, acreage to be disturbed, and the date earthwork starts. We draw the plan, pull the coverage, put the perimeter in and keep the log through closeout. water@stillwaterground.example