Slope & Erosion Control in Greenville, SC

Slope and erosion control in Greenville is mostly a fight with red clay and summer rain. Greenville sits in the Blue Ridge foothills, and the city alone takes in many small hills. Cut a driveway, a pad or a backyard into one of them and you are left with a bank of bare subsoil. The Upstate's Cecil-type clay is sticky and dense, and areas that lost their topsoil long ago expose that clay at the surface. When it is bare it sheds water, and the water takes the clay with it. July and August, the wettest months, bring the storms that do the most damage.

Matching the cover to the slope

There is no one product for every bank. We choose based on how steep the slope is, how long it is, and whether water only falls on it or also runs across it.

• Standard hydromulch with tackifier works on gentle grades and short slopes where seed mostly needs moisture and a little grip.
• A heavier hydromulch rate goes on longer or steeper faces where the first storm would otherwise cut rills.
• Bonded fiber matrix (BFM) sprays on like hydromulch but cures into a continuous mat that sticks to steep faces and holds up to rain right away. It is our usual choice on banks too steep to walk comfortably.
• Erosion control blankets, straw or straw-coconut, are pinned over seeded ground in swales, ditches and creek banks where water flows over the surface.
• Coir blankets last longer and go in channels and spots where the water will keep coming.

Swales, ditches and creek banks

Concentrated flow is harder on seed than rain. A grassed swale that carries a neighborhood's runoff, a ditch along a driveway, or the bank of a creek feeding the Reedy or the Enoree all see water moving fast over the surface. Sprayed mulch alone usually fails there before the grass roots. We pin straw or coir blankets with staples in the direction of flow, overlap the seams so water cannot get under them, and seed beneath. On longer slopes, slope stabilization often also needs the water slowed or redirected at the top, with a diversion or a level spreader, so the bank is not taking the full flow from above.

Why it matters downstream

The Reedy River runs about 65 miles from the foothills northwest of the city through downtown Greenville, Lake Conestee Nature Park and on to Lake Greenwood. Sediment from bare construction ground is one of the things local stormwater programs work to keep out of streams like it, and Greenville County's stormwater ordinance has a full division on grading and sediment control. Good erosion control on your slope keeps your topsoil at home, keeps your neighbor's yard clean, and keeps inspectors satisfied.

When to call

• A cut bank behind a new house that keeps sliding into the yard
• Rills or small gullies forming after each storm
• A pond bank or swale that never grew in
• A slope too steep to mow or seed by hand
• A creek bank losing ground

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