The water bar is perhaps the most well-known forestry best management practice (BMP) used to protect water quality during a timber harvest. Water bars have an important job, and that is to mitigate erosion of forest roads and trails by reducing surface runoff volume and velocity. Despite the water bar’s relative fame, the cost to install one is somewhat of a mystery.
Depending on who you ask, installing one forestland water bar costs between $5 and $150. That’s a wide range! Data from the low end comes from detailed time and motion studies of water bar installation. Data from the middle ($25-50) comes from surveys of loggers and foresters. Data at the high end ($150) comes from the 2023 payment schedule for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP).
In general, BMP installation costs will vary based on a host of variables, including state environmental regulations, site-specific conditions (e.g., slope steepness, soil type, and moisture), availability of materials (e.g., gravel), and the machines used to implement BMPs. Loggers typically bear much of the cost of BMP installation, which generally include practices that control road gradient, surface runoff, and surface cover.
The WAC Forestry Program wants to better understand BMP installation time and cost, specifically for the BMPs we cost-share with NYC Watershed loggers in our BMP Program. The motivation for this study is to ensure that our cost-share rates encourage logger participation in the program. Furthermore, loggers can use study findings when evaluating whether or not a prospective job is economically feasible.
Preliminary data collection is already underway. In early March 2023, I visited an NYC Watershed logging job being cut by Keith Clark of Top Notch Timber Harvesting, LLC. The log landing for this job was narrow with a stream on one side and a hillside seep on the other.
With freeze-thaw conditions occurring, this area had a high potential for rutting. As such, Keith decided to gravel a 400-foot section of road so on-highway log trucks could gain access to the landing on a stable surface. Keith prepared the road surface by blading off the topsoil with a bulldozer. He spread the topsoil in a stable area to prevent it from washing into the stream.
Once the road surface was graded, the first of six loads of gravel was dumped at the forest road entrance.
We rolled out a layer of geotextile fabric on the bare road surface and Keith used the bulldozer to distribute the Size Number 3 crushed stone to an approximate depth of six inches.
This process was repeated five more times over the course of 1.5 days until the graveled section was complete. Considering three hours of dozer time, 400 feet of geotextile fabric, and six loads of gravel, we estimated that this BMP cost $7.60/foot. This is just one of the BMPs we aim to study across roughly 20 timber harvests over the next year. Others include temporary stream crossing installation and closure, water diversion devices, skid trail relocation and closure, and landing rehabilitation.
