Typical maintenance problems and activities for dry swales Typical maintenance problems and activities for dry swales

Typical maintenance problems and activities for dry swales
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Inspection Focus	Common Maintenance Problems	Maintenance Activity	Recommended Maintenance Schedule
Drainage Area and Drawdown Time	Clogging, sediment deposition	Ensure that contributing catchment areas to practice, and inlets are clear of debris	Monthly
	Erosion of catchment area contributing significant amount of sediment	In case of severely reduced drawdown time, scrape bottom of basin and remove sediment. Disc or otherwise aerate/scarify basin bottom. De-thatch if basin bottom is turf grass. Restore original design cross section or revise section to increase infiltration rate and restore with vegetation as necessary.	Upon identification of drawdown times longer than 48 hours or upon complete failure
Site Erosion	Scouring at inlets	Correct earthwork to promote non‐erosive flows that are evenly distributed	As necessary
	Unexpected flow paths into practice	Correct earthwork to eliminate unexpected drainage or created additional stable inlets as necessary	As necessary
Vegetation	Reduced drawdown time damaging plants	Correct drainage issues as described above	Replace with appropriate plants after correction of drainage issues
	Severe weed establishment	Limit the ability for noxious weed establishment by properly mowing, mulching or timely herbicide or hand weeding. Refer to the MDA Noxious Weed List	Bi‐monthly April through October
	Vegetative cover	Add seed/plants to maintain ≥95% vegetative cover.	Bi‐monthly April through October