REPORT: Testing and Specifying Rolled Erosion Control Products

Sediment continues to be a major pollutant of public water resources even though erosion control best management practices, BMPs, are now commonly used. In order to help protect water quality as it relates to sediments, regulatory agencies and site designers are increasingly asking how well specific BMPs will perform quantitatively relative to alternatives. While a large amount of information on erosion control products (ECPs) has been available for quite some time, the information has too often been non-standard, out-of-date, insufficient, or unable to be compared to alternative products, making it difficult for users to create generic construction specifications or qualified product listings of comparable products.

Standardized test procedures have been recognized as the means to develop comparable product data. Thus, a two decade effort by industry professionals has produced recognized tests for measuring relevant material properties as well as performance capabilities of ECPs – with most effort focused on rolled erosion control products (RECPs).

This paper discusses the details of these now commonly used standardized index, bench-scale, and large-scale tests for RECPs, along with a review of data from hundreds of independent tests performed on a range of RECPs under the auspices of the National Transportation Product Evaluation Program (NTPEP). Along with an assessment of the relevance and correlation of the various tests, recommendations will be made on the appropriate use of these test results in specifications for RECPs.