Adding erosion control services for landscapers

The last thing an owner of a luxurious lakefront property wants is to see their lawn crumble away at the cliffside, or worse watch their home hurling down into one of the Great Lakes.

That’s why erosion control has become such an integral part of maintaining these communities along the shores.

The major players on the Great Lakes

This is especially prevalent along Lake Erie in Erie, Pa., where Dave Marino, president and owner of Dahlkemper Landscape Architects and Contractors says the lake has been eroding for thousands of years.

“It’s been a huge part of our business for almost 20 years,” Marino says of the company that turns 70 in 2025. “We’re kind of known now as the Lake Bank People. The bluff along Erie County changes constantly. You have parts where the shale is up higher so that’s a different type of erosion than say on the West Side where there are 200-foot bluffs with glacial material on the bottom that’s impervious and you have sand and gravel above that, which is highly erodible.”

Even further north up in Au Gres, Mich., Blake Tuttle, owner of North Coast Landscaping, says his business started offering erosion control services after a bad stretch of weather from 2019 to 2021 made it a necessity.

“During 2019 to about 2021, with 2020 being the worst, we had people where the house was careening over nothing. There was nothing under the foundation. These people were losing a few hundred yards of topsoil overnight,” he recalls. “I decided to buy an excavator because all our customers who lived on the lakeshore — they were having issues. They were having to do sea walls or bring in riprap and I thought this looks like a time to capitalize on all this stuff.”

Jonathan Koepke, treasurer of the Great Lakes chapter of the International Erosion Control Association, says erosion is a huge issue.

“The shorelines of the Great Lakes themselves are susceptible to erosion. You’ve also got the sand bluffs and dunes along the shores of Lake Michigan and the issues in Lake Erie with sediment from development activity and farm fields,” he says. “Erosion and sediment control are critical aspects of maintaining the water quality of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are a national, and international, treasure. It’s people’s drinking water.”

As a professional development and advocacy organization, Derek Oosterhouse, president of the IECA Great Lakes chapter, says the association is committed to stabilizing controlled areas so there is no pollution or runoff affecting the water bodies or their ecosystems.

Cataloging the causes

Marino says there are three main causes of erosion, and most are caused by water, including toe and surface water erosion.

“You have toe erosion where the lake waters and wave action can destroy and eat away the toe. We’ve got water that seeps through the ground in a lot of places and when it reaches the edge of the bluff, it’ll erode the surface of the bank,” Marino explains. “You have surface water on the top of the ground that can accumulate and create erosion as well. If there’s a pipe that emits out into the bank or someone’s downspout that goes over the edge, it’s eating away of the bank itself. We have different methods of applying protection for those.”

So, Marino says the best place to start is by identifying the water source.

“If it’s toe erosion, we look at, 'Are there ways to reduce the wave action?' If there’s money available, we’ve done beach protection with heavy armored walls, break walls, armored rock, etc. For those who don’t have that amount of money, we’ll typically look at other ways of creating vegetation on the slope,” he says. “If the slope can be laid back early on in erosion, it’s going to be fairly steep and it’s trying to get back to 45 degrees — that’s just nature. And we try not to fight nature if we can help it.”

For surface erosion, Marino says a French drain is usually the best route to take.

“Sometimes we can do an interceptor drain, which is like a very deep French drain where you find the level when it changes from a very permeable to an impermeable clay material,” he says.

A new, natural approach

Now with more experience and projects under his belt, Tuttle says his company is changing how it handles erosion control cases. He adds this is in large part due to new regulations by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy — or EGLE.

“Typically, back then, we’d use riprap stone with soil erosion fabric and just trying to backfill behind it…now we’re getting away from that. EGLE passed a bill where now it’s a more lengthy process,” he says. “They want to come out, analyze it and they want to do less invasive approaches. They want to use natural materials and having more water grasses and all that versus sea walls and rocks. It’s better for the animals and the plant life.”

And Tuttle adds that once one property adds a large, steel sea wall to combat the erosion — the neighboring homes are obliged to as well or risk being more susceptible.

“As people build more shorelines and sea walls, I think it intensifies the wave action,” he says. “So, when a wave hits a wall, where does that energy go? It goes back out and to the next soft spot. If five of your neighbors do sea walls and the one guy on the end doesn’t, his is going to be the one that washes out.”

While the sea walls may not be aesthetically pleasing, Tuttle adds they’ve gone with an alternative that gives a more natural vibe.

“We’ve done a Ready Wall, which is like a giant block that weighs 4,000 pounds or so and its pre-cast concrete made to look like stones,” he says. ‘That makes it look better than a steel sea wall.”

While erosion is inevitable, Koepke says eliminating the human element of erosion is the first step.

“Erosion is a natural process and will always take place,” he says. “What we worry about is trying to mitigate human-induced erosion or erosion that is accelerated by human activity — whether that’s farming or land development or anything else.”

Koepke says best practices for erosion control include planting cover crops, revegetating the site quickly, installing soil fences or straw models or other devices to reduce sediment in runoffs of construction sites.

In fact, Koepke says that any erosion control measures should be as natural to the environment as possible.

“There’s a lot of momentum behind using native vegetation rather than turf grasses around shorelines and storm water ponds,” he says. “The native plants have really deep root systems that both hold the soil in place and promote soil health. They can provide a whole variety of other benefits for pollinators and native habitats as well.”

Oosterhouse adds the IECA is really pushing naturalization through its advocacy and outreach work.

“The focus is always on trying to get green solutions anywhere we can. Obviously there are limitations depending on the stresses and different velocities that we’re dealing with, but ultimately anywhere we can offer a green solution — it really is the best method,” he says.

A rocky path to completion

But when it comes to performing this type of work, Marino and Tuttle say there are plenty of challenges, the first and foremost being that fighting Mother Nature is never easy.

“Money is always another one of the major issues,” Marino says. “If you’re putting in a sea wall and groins into the lake, there’s permitting and you start to rack up money on the soft side of things and then you’ve got to get the equipment down there and maybe bringing in a barge can get expensive really quickly. You can get into the hundreds of thousands fast. At that point, it comes down to how much is the property worth? And is it in imminent danger?”

Getting equipment to where it needs to be to mitigate the erosion is also a struggle that both contractors know all too well.

“There’s a couple of hindrances — but a lot of times, access is one of them,” Marino says. “The access can be very tricky. Usually, if it’s along the lake bank, it’s hard to get heavy machines down to the bank. It’s not safe. So, a lot of it is done by hand.”

Tuttle adds it’s a small space, so sometimes they have to take to the sea — or the lake. But in most instances, it comes down to talking with the neighbors and gaining access that way, something he says can turn into a hassle.

“Logistically, on the jobsite, it can be very difficult,” he says. “A lot of these lakefront houses are like 50-foot lots and nobody ever plans to have an excavator of piece of huge equipment out on their lakefront. Sometimes you have to get permission from the neighbor three doors down to be able to access in to do the work.”

Back in 2020 when the work was far more pressing, Tuttle says anyone and everyone was coming into Michigan to help with erosion, some of which didn’t have the proper knowledge or certifications.

“When it was in more high demand, we were having people come in and promise the world and customers would spend the money and obviously those people didn’t know what they were doing so it ended up being an inferior product. We were having to come back and fix it,” he recalls.

Back then, Tuttle says he could get a permit to start work within hours but that’s since changed.

“There really was no process,” he says. “They were giving them out like candy because people were losing their houses. It was hurry up and fix it and do what you can.”

However, after investing all of the money for the proper equipment, Tuttle says erosion control work has certainly declined.

“I don’t really see too much erosion now,” he says. “It’s really nonexistent now — that kind of work. Which is tough because you don’t really want to invest a bunch of money in equipment that you only need for this kind of work because it has its highs and lows… looking at the data, we’re not due for another 25 years for another high-water event. Maybe when I’m getting ready to retire, that’ll be my last hurrah.”

Marino agrees that the erosion control work comes and goes, but when the weather calls for it, his crews are ready to tackle it.

“It’s cyclical here,” he says. “The lake levels rise and fall almost every 10 to 11 years. When the water is really high, and we have major storms that’s when things get rough. Back between 2018 to 2022, we had some significant storms those years. There was a huge amount of erosion. Some areas probably lost 40 feet.”

An emphasis on education

When Tuttle first got into the game, he acknowledges there wasn’t much education on erosion control, and he learned a lot “on the fly.” But now, the state is stepping in to fix that.

“EGLE is now doing a two-day class where they do some hands-on training,” Tuttle says. The IECA is also making an effort to educate contractors better on erosion.

“A lot of what we do in the IECA is training practitioners and training engineers and contractors about the importance of both controlling and maintaining erosion control and sediment control on active development sites,” Koepke says. “Also, educating on the newest technologies, the newest practices and the newest methods of controlling erosion along shorelines and streambanks.”

Oosterhouse says this starts before they even make it to the jobsite.

“Education is certainly an increased focus of ours,” he says. “We offer several field days and other educational events throughout the year. We really try to also educate at the college or university level as well, so that we can train upcoming professionals and recruit professionals to join us in this industry.”

The author is senior editor with Lawn & Landscape.