I wasn't going to chime in on this, since I actually wear two hats and have a fairly strong opinion on this. My second one is that of a contractor that does excavation and clearing and my first one as a state biologist working on salmon recovery in our state. Erosion control (or I should say lack of it) costs the taxpayers of washington millions of dollars every year. The cost comes in a variety of forms and results in both direct and indirect costs.
Obviously the impacts to fish habitat (loss of habitat) are huge and it's difficult to quantify. One recent study indicated sport fishing in washington brings local business something on the order of $3 billion dollars a year. Much of this is too smaller rural hotels, grocery stores, fishing guides, etc. If we continue to choke streams with sediment, the state stands to loose a substantial revenue generator here in washington.
Another more direct cost of erosion is the increased cost of maintaining drainage structures. I can think of several instances where a contractor doing clearing work lost enough sediment to clog thousands of feet of drainage ditch. In many instances, ditch water was forced out onto county or city roads which then necessitated governement workers to go out and clean up the mess. I've even seen county roads eroded and torn up because of ditches becoming clogged from erosion from construction sites. There's also the situations where I've seen highway construction cost overruns because the soil that was to form a base for roads was eroded away. In one case a couple thousand yards of fill slid down the hill and new fill had to be trucked in at taxpayer expense.
When it comes to farmers, someone summed it up already in one word "politics". Farmers have strong lobbyists and they are quite effective at stopping any sort of regulation or requirements that would cost them anything. On the other hand, I have to give a lot of farmers credit. Many farmers are realizing the cost of erosion and have gone to "no till" methods in addition to cover cropping exposed soils to prevent erosion.
Obviously I have some very strong opinions about this, but this is one of those cases where a lot of P-poor contractors cost US (we the taxpayers) a lot of money. I guess I see erosion control as part of the job of being a responsible contractor and not allowing my activities to negatively impact others. It's also an opportunity as someone else said to increase profits by providing erosion control. Sorry for the long drawn out response, but this is one of the "soapbox" issues for me
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