Triassic Park: Durham County Adopts New Requirements to Address the Challenges of Triassic Soils

Tomato Soup! That's what the neighbors called the stream running near their homes. Triassic Soils in North Carolina do not respond to typical erosion control measures due to the small clay particles. Despite meeting all current local and state requirements for erosion control, the discharge from construction sites with these underlying soils still looked like Tomato Soup. Durham County’s Stormwater and Erosion Control Division worked to develop Triassic soil-specific requirements to help improve the discharge from these sites and alleviate neighbors’ concerns. Solutions include additional rows of silt fence along buffered areas, increased sediment basin volumes and dewatering times, and becoming the first erosion control program in North Carolina to require that flocculants be used on sites. This presentation will discuss the steps the County took to develop these new requirements while being caught between community members and local environmental organizations who wanted the County to do more and the development community concerned about them going too far. It will also discuss implementation of these new requirements, especially in how flocculant use is included in erosion control plans and applied and monitored on sites. The presentation will highlight lessons learned for other local government erosion control programs.