What is Sediment Control and Why Do You Need It

• Protect, restore, enhance the quality of the environment in NSW
• Provide increased opportunity for public involvement & participation in environment protection
• Ensure community has access to relevant and meaningful information about pollution
• To reduce the risk of human health and prevent degradation of the environment by a number of different things including pollution prevention, the elimination of harmful wastes, and reducing the pollution at the source.

Why You Should Have a Sediment Control Plan:

• It’s the law.
• You may get fined if you don’t.
• It’s affordable.
• The Community Demands it.
  • 54% of people ranked the environment ‘a very important part of their lives’
  • 66% of people think the council could do more to help protect the local environment
• The local environment deserves it.
• It’s expensive not to deal with it.
  • Erosion can block stormwater drains leading to flooding.
  • Erosion can destroy habitats for plants and animals.
  • Erosion affects the ways rivers flow.

One of the main aspects of the POEO is avoiding erosion and keeping the waterways clean from any pollution. Pollution includes sediment, concrete, slurry, paints, solvents, adhesives, pesticides, and litter, just to name a few.

Erosion is defined as the wearing away of land by the action of rainfall, running water, and other sources like wind or gravitational creep and can have huge effects on water quality.  Especially when there is rain, it’s very common for these items listed above to pollute the waterways and it’s your responsibility to avoid that from happening on your work sites. If you don’t, you can get fined a lot of money. 

To avoid getting fined, having a plan for sediment control is necessary on a work site. One building site can lose up to four truckloads of soil in a single storm, so having a plan put in place for these instances are extremely important.  There are many different forms of sediment control and what you need depends on your worksite and your surroundings.

What You Can Do:

Once you have an approved sediment control plan, you can contact a sediment control installation company to install your preferred sediment control service according to your plan. There are a variety of different sediment control services, but silt fencing is an extremely popular option when it comes to sediment control due to its fast installation and affordability.

Silt fencing acts somewhat like a dam and traps the sediment on the site while allowing water to leave the site. It’s a simple strategy, easy to install, it can easily be shifted around, removed, and maintained throughout the construction of your work site.

In the past, there was usually just one form of silt fence- a traditional green colour fence. However, at Greenaway Sediment Control we have a variety of different options when it comes to silt fencing. Greenaway is the original supplier in NSW of Hi-Vis Silt Fence. Hi-Vis Silt Fencing has all the functional aspects of traditional green silt fencing but has the added safety feature of being high visibility. Having a Hi-Vis silt fence will increase the safety of your worksite and help reduce accidents which in return, will help with meeting WH&S requirements. You can get Hi-Vis silt fencing installed for the same price as traditional silt fencing, so essentially no reason why you shouldn’t get Hi-Vis silt fencing over traditional green silt fencing. To learn more about Hi-Vis Silt Fencing you can click here. 

Traditional Green Silt Fence isn’t as durable as Hi-Vis Silt Fence

We also have additional add-ons for silt fencing from anything from timber posts, additional flagging and warning barriers, top wire support, and much more. You can see our add-ons available for silt fencing by clicking the link here.