An official at the Prince George’s County Department of Environmental Resources said his division has received more than 100 phone calls since Monday morning complaining about rain-related erosion issues around the county’s construction sites.
“We’ve had so much rain that many of the controls are becoming ineffective,” Thomas Matzen, acting deputy director for Environmental Operations, said Tuesday. “Any site that’s got any amount of soil that’s been graded and now stabilized, the water tends to want to move that material.”
Matzen said county residents have probably seen a fair amount of muddy water running through gutters because the amount and frequency of the rain has prevented sediments from settling out of the runoff. The county’s 16 sediment erosion control inspectors have visited sites that residents have complained about, Matzen said, as well as checking in at large projects like Fairwood in Bowie and National Harbor in Oxon Hill.
A lot of sediment has reached county waterways despite silt fences, storm water ponds and other preventative measures, Matzen said.
“The biggest problem that we have is there is only so much that you can do until the weather clears up,” Matzen said. “It’s sediment control, not sediment elimination.”
Pr. George’s has most erosive soils in state
Dave Bourdon, an official with the Prince George’s Soil Conservation District, said county land is mostly light sand with clay and silts. The most erosive soils in Maryland are in the county’s Westphalia region. Combine those soils with development, Bourdon said, and washouts are inevitable.
ejacobson@dcexaminer.com
