Odd Fellows Recreation Club Riverbank Stabilization Project<\/h4>\n

Russian River<\/h4>\n

Guerneville, California<\/h4>\n

The Odd Fellows Recreation Club (OFRC) is a small private community, home to about four hundred residents. The club also provides a large number of cabins, camping and RV sites for member\u2019s guests. Access to homes and other facilities is via a single narrow paved road. During the winter of 2004\/05 a series of storms began to destabilize large sections of the riverbank along thousands of feet of their property, threatening homes and cabins, buried water and electrical lines, and a newly constructed multi-million dollar sewer system.<\/p>\n

The group hired a conventional engineering firm to design a repair which consisted of pulling back the bank to a stable slope and covering that bare soil with approximately 40,000 tons of rock. The design proved to be very expensive, near impossible to acquire permits for, and quite unfeasible as 2,000 truckloads of rock would have created a severe traffic passage problem on their narrow access road.<\/p>\n

Progress on a stabilization plan was halted at that point until the winter of 2008 when during a large storm a hole developed in the riverbank that was 40 to 60 feet wide 25 to 40 feet deep and extended 100 feet inland to the face of a 10,000 gallon septic holding tank.<\/p>\n

One of the OFRC Board members had heard of our company and asked us to come by and have a look at the problem. That was our introduction to what was to become an award winning project that when implemented, would stabilize and revegetate over 1,200 feet of riverbank and flood terrace along 2,115 feet of the Russian River. The stabilization\/revegetation work used a large number of different bioengineered live structures and only 4,000 tons of rock.<\/p>\n

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Upstream of the project a large rock outcropping deflects river flows into the OFRC property.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A mid channel gravel bar across the river from the OFRC property was growing larger with each storm flow and pushing the erosive force of the river against the OFRC riverbank<\/p><\/div>\n

February 2008: Following a large storm a hole developed in the riverbank that was 40 to 60 feet wide 25 to 40 feet deep and extended 100 feet inland to the face of a 10,000 gallon septic holding tank. Over 6,000 cubic yards of soil were washed into the river.\u00a0 This was BioEngineering Associates’ introduction to the erosion problems facing the OFRC.<\/p>\n

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Riverbank failure near the community’s 10,000 gallon septic tank.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a temporary emergency measure, the community had brought in an excavator to place boulders into the growing hole. Unfortunately the mud flow from the hole was so intense that it floated the boulders out into the river.\u00a0 Later these boulders were used as part of the log and boulder fish habitat structure built at the site.<\/p>\n

BE filled in the hole using an NRCS design which consisted of installing a drain system at the base of the tank and filling the hole with one foot lifts of engineering fill compacted to 95%.<\/p>\n

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The grassy area on the left side of the photograph is the emergency project after construction.<\/p><\/div>\n

The full stabilization project was divided up into four primary sites along with constructing many roughened channels below culverts which ran underneath the access road to the community.<\/p>\n

Odd Fellows Recreation Club Project Site Map<\/p><\/div>\n

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Site #1 Construction<\/strong><\/p>\n

At site #1\u00a0 a\u00a0 gully had formed as a result of runoff which was directed through a small opening down to the river. \u00a0 The headcut at the top of the gully was threatening an access trail and other developed areas. To solve this problem and save the trail, BE constructed a roughened channel and staked the channel with live willow posts.<\/p>\n\n\t\t