Manitoba Floodway Project

Erosion and Sediment Control and Vegetation Services for the Manitoba Floodway

Mid-Canada Hydroseeding has been in the business of site erosion and sediment control for 13 years now.  We have participated in various large scale earth moving projects over the past 13 years.  One of our most recent large scale projects has been at the Manitoba Floodway, where we provided erosion and sediment control as well as re-vegetation services for several Manitoba Floodway Authority Contracts.

MCH is the first to arrive on the new project site, with the installation of Silt Fence.  A high visibility green fence is utilized on this project due to the extensive use of the floodway area by recreation vehicles, such as snowmobiles and ATV’s.  Our Tommy Silt Fence Machine, which is the only Tommy currently in Manitoba, has installed many Kilometres of fence on the project. Once sliced into the ground, the trench is back compacted by running our tractor over each side of the trench twice. This allows the fence to be virtually impossible to remove from the trench, which almost eliminates blow outs of the fence.

Six foot metal T posts are then placed into the ground, with 2 feet being below the soil, and 4 feet above.  The silt fence fabric is then wire tied to the fence at 6 inch intervals, and a high visibility orange poly post with reflector is placed every 20 meters for safety in the winter time.

Silt fence has an Ultra Violet life span of 1500 maximum hours before the fence needs to be replaced.  Our weekly inspections of the fence provides our customers with a continuous silt fence protection, with our employees keeping track of the UV breakdown and general maintenance such as retying the fence after windstorms.  Once the project is completed and vegetation has established, the fence and posts are removed from the project.

MCH has also provided erosion control blanket installation for the diversion swales on the project.  The swales once excavated are lined with erosioncontrolblanket.com’s SC32 70% straw and 30% coconut erosion control blanket.  It is secured to the ground using an 8 inch metal turf pin placed in a staple pattern of 4 per square meter.  The terminal ends and sides of the blanket are placed in a 6 by 6 inch trench and pined and backfilled and compacted.

Once blanket installation and seeding has been completed, Cascade Geotechnical’s Enviroberms are installed at specified intervals across and down the channel to dissipate water velocity and thus erosive energy.  These swales allow overland flow, or off site run-on to be delivered to the floodway’s low-flow channel around the areas of newly establishing seed.

The majority of the re-vegetation worked performed by MCH at the floodway project has been soil preparation, drillseeding, and straw mulching and crimping.  The soils exposed after excavation at the floodway are heavy clay soils.  With little organic content, the more preparation and care put into seeding, the better the germination results will be.  The earth moving contractors pre-disk the soil with a 6 inch deep agricultural disker. Then MCH re-disks this work with a smaller 2 inch deep agricultural disker.  The site is then diamond harrowed, and fertilized.  The soil is then drillseeded with our Aera-vator AE-80 vibratory drillseeder, which does an excellent job at final seedbed preparation and seed placement.

The site is now ready for the application of Straw Mulch.  Straw Mulch is blown on to the job site with one of two straw blowers that MCH has.  We have a Finn B40 small bale straw blower, for tight locations like those around bridges and road ways, and a Bale King round bale blower for larger areas.

Both machines provide an excellent coverage and even distribution of straw.  We use only the best and freshest straw bales for straw blowing, many utilizing Canadian Winter Wheat Straw.  This allows us to provide excellent erosion control and moisture retention, without the potential of hindering growth.

Once applied at a rate of 10,000 pounds per acre, the straw is disk anchored into the soil using our tractor and coulter style straw crimper. This is passed over the newly mulched site in two directions 90 degrees to each other. Once completed the site looks very similar to a disked straw stubble field.

For more information on large scale reclamation and erosion and sediment control services, see our contact us page.