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January 2006
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St. John’s River Water Management District officials in Florida were frustrated. Two areas they oversee had been experiencing problems following heavy rainfall.
Every time it rained, rising stormwater in a swamp adjacent to the Herndon Swamp North Levee - an extremely narrow corridor a mile long – would flood the area.
 Various sodding and seeding techniques proved futile, with grass not growing as quickly as desired. “We neededv a grassy technique that would provide stability,” says Ed Shinskie, P.E., a construction manager for the water district.
Ralph Brown, P.E., who oversees the water management district’s construction management section, notes that sod had problems.
“Sod fields get flooded, you can’t get sod when you need it or people don’t lay it the way we want it,” he says. “We tried hydroseeding in the past, but never got good coverage.
“We were hoping someone would come along with a better technology because you can stabilize a much larger area in a day with hydroseeding than you can in trying to sod it. Hydrograss Technologies did a demonstration project for us and we decided to try it on the Herndon Swamp project. We were very happy with the results.”
Those results came from GeoPerm. Made of premium softwood fiber, a natural guar gum tackifier and a proprietary crosslinking agent, the bonded fiber matrix product combines the low cost and ease of hydromulching with the protection of a blanket and establishment of healthy turf.
The district also utilized GeoPerm in another project, the Sebastian River Dredged Material Containment Area, where a fair amount of erosion and washout was occurring within its two miles of 18-feet high slopes. Sod didn’t provide the necessary slope stabilization quickly enough. When the district switched to hydroseeding and mulching, “it worked wonderfully,” Shinskie says. “We have a little bit of erosion now and then, but nothing like what we had been experiencing.”
Shinskie points out GeoPerm not only performs well, but is cost-effective.
“When you sod something or seed it conventionally, there’s a certain cost and that initial cost is more than when using hydroseeding, but then there’s an additional cost because if you have washouts, then you’ve got the cost of re-grassing it,” he says. “With GeoPerm, all we have to do is re-grade and spray. There isn’t the same amount of erosion.”
District officials are so enamored by the product that they plan to specify it for future jobs. And they’re pleased with Hydrograss Technology’s service as well.
“A lot of times contractors don’t respond to you,” Shinskie says. “These guys were responsive and followed up with calls to make sure we were satisfied with the product. They also guaranteed everything they did.” |
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