Celebrating over 25 years at the top, Heritage Hills Golf course in McCook, Nebraska has earned recognition as one of the most outstanding public golf courses in America. Since opening in 1981, the course has continued to challenge players and be a great experience at all skill levels. This must see course's front-nine is a warm-up for the rugged back-nine that cuts through southwest Nebraska canyons and gullies.  Complete with water hazards with geomembrane liners installed, these golf course lake liners will last a lifetime; A lifetime of harassing golfers of all abilities.  Watersaver Company installed these lake liners in 1981 and they're still holding up strong.  If you need geomembranes for any application: wastewater lagoon liners, secondary containment liners, reservoir liners, landfill liners, etc. call Watersaver today.

Two incomparable golf courses, with large golf course lakes,  elevate Hualalai to the status of one of the elite golf resorts in world constructed with the world's most-reliable geomembrane liners.  The Hualalai Golf Course is the first Nicklaus design on Hawai‘i and is home to the prestigious MasterCard Championship at Hualalai, a PGA TOUR Champions Tour event. This course is available for play to Hualalai Club members, their guests, and the guests of the Four Seasons Resort.  Nicklaus uses high-strength lake liners to ensure his water hazards present daunting challenges for anyone's game.  Watersaver Company fabricated these golf course lake liners in their CO facility.  No temporary erosion control products were used on this site during construction.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a "control gate" at the foot of Aetna Mountain Road in the Cummings Cove development in Lookout Valley.  Alan Solon, a partner in the development of the remainder of Cummings Cove as well as a thousand acres on top of the mountain, said the gate was needed to prevent trespassers and to protect private property.  Steve Leach, city public works administrator, said the old dirt road up the mountain is regularly used by Jeepers and four-wheelers. He said those using the road have destroyed survey markers as well as stolen material at building sites.  He said those using the road have trespassed on private and created extensive erosion problems.   NPDES rules and regulations require the use of erosion control blankets, turf reinforecement mats, hydraulic mulch, silt fence, straw wattles and other erosion control products to eliminate sediment from leaving a jobsite >1 acre in size.  Sedimentation ponds, lined with high-strength geomembrane liners, help control high flow areas from overburdening these erosion control measures during large storm events.

Source: SacBee - Scientists who for decades reported that famously clear Lake Tahoe was turning murkier have discovered that its clarity actually has been stabilizing since 2001.  Using a new, more sophisticated statistical analysis of environmental data, researchers also determined that a reduced rate of visibility loss in the lake was likely the payoff from decades of erosion control, purchases of environmentally sensitive land and restrictive building rules designed to curb runoff.  NPDES rules and regulations require the use of erosion control blankets, turf reinforecement mats, hydraulic mulch, silt fence, straw wattles and other erosion control products to eliminate sediment from leaving a jobsite >1 acre in size.  Sedimentation ponds, lined with high-strength geomembrane liners, help control high flow areas from overburdening these erosion control measures during large storm events.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The state is committing millions of dollars to erosion control projects to help protect some of Alaska's coastal villages.  State officials say they are ready to take a leadership role to protect coastal villages threatened by the sea. A Palin administration cabinet group is calling for extending seawalls in two villages this summer and building a new excavation road in a third.  State officials say they hope the millions in state money will attract new federal aid to keep the villages from washing away. The problem, they say, stems from climate change and loss of seasonal sea ice that used to protect the villages from fall storms.  Without state leadership, a half-dozen threatened communities were left to compete for limited federal funds and attention from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Now, the corps is working with the state in setting a new priority list.  "The hope is we won't see random acts of government activity that are not focused on the same shared vision," said Patricia Opheen, the chief of engineering for the Army corps Alaska District and federal co-chair of the working group that drew up the plans.  The new money appropriated by the Legislature represents 35 percent of the total anticipated cost of several seawall projects. That 35 percent state share was set in discussions with the corps, said the state's co-chair, Mike Black, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.  "We're real pleased with the efforts of the state," said Steve Ivanoff, a transportation planner based in Unalakleet for the regional nonprofit agency Kawerak. "The state had been absent from all the discussions in the past. They would only protect (Department of Transportation) properties using erosion control products, not residential areas."  The new priority list commits the state to protecting the endangered villages now, not just waiting for a possible move in the future, said Black.  One community that did not garner new construction funds from the state this year is Shishmaref, where the village is still working on a rock seawall extension by installing turf reinforcement mats begun last year with federal funding. The Army corps awarded a $6.8 million contract last year for the Shishmaref work.  "I guess other communities are needing protection too," said Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition member Tony Weyiouanna. He said an emergency evacuation of Kivalina during a fall storm last year "kind of put them up higher on the need for funding."  In Shaktoolik and Koyukuk, the state is only providing planning funds.  The new state money includes $3.3 million to build a riprap rock seawall with a high-strength geomembrane liner in Kivalina, replacing part of a $3 million, 1,800-foot wall that relied on wire baskets and bags of sand and gravel. The earlier wall failed quickly and was given up for lost in last fall's storm.  The corps is already putting $4 million into rock work this summer at Kivalina.  In addition, the state is putting $5 million toward a new seawall for Unalakleet. The full 1,500-foot wall there is expected to cost $13.5 million.  Unalakleet leaders hope to get the new seawall under way this summer, before the next round of fall storms.  "The problem with this whole thing," said Ivanoff, "is we don't know when the next big one is."  Kivalina and Shishmaref are built on barrier islands, but Newtok faces a different problem: Tundra beneath the village is melting and collapsing into a tidal river exposed to sea waves.  An effort to move the Bering Sea village to high ground is starting, with $3 million in new state money helping to build a barge landing and evacuation road. Next step will be to find funding for a $4.5 million evacuation center, the state said.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) today announced that the Conference Committee has completed deliberation on the 2007 Farm Bill. This legislation includes the Stabenow provision to improve the Great Lakes Basin Program for Soil Erosion and Sediment Control, which targets clean-up activities in severely polluted watersheds and restores urban watersheds that have been degraded by development. The Farm Bill will also help implement the Great Lakes Regional Collaborative Strategy, which is dedicated to water cleanliness, combating invasive species, habitat and land conservation, and wildlife protection.

“Making sure our beautiful lakes, waterways, lands and wildlife are preserved and protected is vital to the very identity of our state and our nation,” said Stabenow. “This Farm Bill places a premium on conservation which is critical to our environment and economy.”  The Farm Bill expands essential programs like the Wetlands Reserve Program, the Conservation Security Program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program. Additionally, the farm bill would establish new incentives for taxpayers who take voluntary measures to aid in the recovery of certain endangered species.  As a member of the Farm Bill Conference Committee and Senate Agriculture Committee, Stabenow has served as a leading voice for Michigan throughout the crafting of this legislation. She has served on agricultural committees in all four legislative bodies in which she was a member, including the Michigan House, Michigan Senate, U.S. House and currently, the U.S. Senate. She is also the first Senator from Michigan to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee since Senator Phil Hart from 1959 to 1962.

Conservation/Great Lakes Provisions Included in the Farm Bill:  The Great Lakes Basin Program for Soil Erosion and Sediment Control

The Department of Commerce has selected the city of Merrill to regulate erosion control, sediment control and stormwater management for commercial buildings within the municipality.  Under the agent delegation agreement, Darin Pagel, the city's building inspector, will be responsible for regulating erosion and sediment control at public buildings and places of employment for Merrill.

Views on the cleanup needs at a 144-acre riverside waste site near Millsboro will clash at a public hearing May 29, putting NRG’s aging Indian River power plant once again under a microscope.  The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control hearing was scheduled to allow community comments on a plan for “remedial action” at the Burton Island Old Ash Landfill, on the east side of the plant.  Delmarva Power & Light, the plant’s previous owner, piled coal ash and dredge spoils to a depth of 10 to 20 feet on unlined (without geomembranes) ground and sediments at Burton Island between 1957 and 1979.  In 2005, after NRG had purchased the plant, DNREC employees noticed that the ash was washing directly into the river and an adjoining tributary, releasing toxic metals into the water.  Subsequent studies found a slightly increased cancer risk to people who consume fish or shellfish from the immediate area, along with some dangers to wildlife and aquatic life. The hearing is about the adequacy of NRG’s proposal to install nearly two miles of stony or fibrous materials to stabilize the shoreline, as well as improvements to some adjacent wetland areas.

Some residents are unhappy with the plan.  “It doesn’t address sediment contamination that has occurred near the island, where the ash has eroded into the water, and it doesn’t address the groundwater contamination on the island that’s migrating into the creek,” said John Austin, a Lewes-area resident and former Environmental Protection Agency scientist.  One well test found groundwater with contamination far in excess of state cancer risk limits, Austin said.  NRG has been under increasing pressure from local and state citizens groups to curb emissions from its coal- and oil-fired boilers and to better control pollution from unlined ash piles.  Robert Newsome, a DNREC spokesman, said that the agency wants to hear from the public about Burton Island, and said that the plan could change.  “If comments go a certain way, that could result in some additional things taking place,” Newsome said. “Work could start reasonably quickly after that, but we don’t have an exact date” because of the potential for amendments after the hearing.

“It’s not something that we’re trying to put off for an extended period of time,” Newsome said.  DNREC already has ordered NRG to commission additional studies for the landfill itself, noting risk to wildlife from consuming ash or water from pools atop the pile.  Pollutants at the site include arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium vanadium and zinc.  Cost estimates for the current proposal are unavailable, but DNREC has said that the plant owners would finance the work. 
Separate work is continuing under a $6.8 million Delmarva Power cleanup agreement targeting a major, long-undiscovered fuel oil leak that contaminated ground adjacent to the river.

Carver - Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a true conservationist. Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, he implemented a program to help reforest great expanses of the nation in order to reverse the ever-growing soil erosion problem.  Commonly known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), this civilian army of 3,463,766 million young men, veterans and Native Americans also served to put out-of-work folks back into employ through the program.  It is estimated that 100,000 of these young men served in Massachusetts in areas familiar to most of us between 1933 and 1942, Myles Standish State Forest (MSSF), Freetown-Fall River State Forest, Nickerson State Park and Wrentham State Forest all benefited from their efforts.  Literally billions of trees were planted as 800 parks and forests were created across the country.

CCC workers, sometimes referred to asRoosevelt’s Tree Army, Tree Troopers and Soil Soldiers, also stocked ponds and lakes with millions of fish, placed erosion control products on farmlands, fought fires, revegetated ranges, restored 3,890 historic structures, and built hundreds of thousands of roads and trails. They also helped develop mosquito controls, wildlife management and riverbank and streambank erosion control. The CCC also created many of the camping areas currently in use.  The Friends of Myles Standish State Forest and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) are joining together to host a community-wide celebration in honor of the CCC at the MSSF headquarters to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the CCC. They are seeking local folks who served in the CCC so they may be presented with recognition awards for their years of service.

Source: Mother Earth News - A "well-behaved" brook can produce energy; water for crops, livestock, or and fish for food and re- creation. people; creation. A degraded one, on the other hand, detracts from the appearance of its surround ings and-during and just after a flood-can endanger life and property, as well as ab sconding with chunks of irreplaceable soil.

Floods and massive soil erosion naturally bring to mind another virtue of a wellmannered stream: its ability to carry excess water off the land in an orderly fashion. A stream, however, isn't the only thing that can perform that function. There's that human invention known as a ditch. Far too often, when a stream fails to dispose of its load of water efficiently, we tend to think of it as a malfunctioning ditch. We even discipline rowdy streams into monotonous canals through the process called channelization: straightening and deepening the streambed and removing all obstructions to flow.  This often "works" in controlling the flooding and erosion control-if you don't care about fish, wildlife, aesthetics, or recreation, and if you can justify dumping your problem on people downstream.

You can stop streams from flooding or changing course over the years without resorting to heroic engineering feats. You can also prevent changes in course and water level from occurring so abruptly that the carrying capacity of the land-for everything from wildlife to agriculture to housing-is reduced with each rain.