Erosion Control June 2012 : Page 23

Most of this type of business comes through word of mouth, Dosdall says. She is selective about whom she rents the equipment to, because she doesn’t trust everyone to care for it properly. “I’m usu-ally here when they come and get it,” she says. “I’ve got to make sure it’s secured onto their trailer. My biggest concern is they’re not going to lose it going down the road.” Dosdall says one of the most difficult aspects of doing residential work is that the property owner wants the job done right away. “All of my other jobs have contracts. If they call me to say I’ve got to get out there to put silt fence in or it’s time to do seeding or I have to do mulching for temporary erosion, that’s where I have to be because I have a con-tract. It’s hard to drop everything to do a residential lawn,” she says. She hasn’t added any employees re-cently to her staff of three full-time workers and seasonal part-time workers, but she says that’s no so much because of the economy as the climate. “We had a very wet spring and summer; it did not look good at all,” she says. “When it stopped raining about the end of July, it never rained. That went nonstop into December. We didn’t miss a day of work, and that’s unusual for fall. So the fall turned out well for us.” Educating the Customer— and Himself Frank Brown started CFB Contracting in 2006 to serve the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina with envi-ronmental contracting, erosion control, and best management practice (BMP) inspections. Before that, he’d been doing home repairs and remodeling and a bit of erosion control work. As he watched the housing market collapse, he concen-trated his efforts on erosion control, “and it’s been an evolutionary process ever since,” he says. Brown says he finds that by educating people about the need for erosion control, they make better choices and it helps his business. He starts by teaching fifth grad-ers in local schools about erosion control. He also works with the Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation. The Neuse River has been subject to a number of environmental and public health problems because of municipal and agricultural wastewater discharge and stormwater runoff, as well as fish kills believed to result from in-creased nutrient levels from the dinofla-gellate Pfiesteria piscicida . “It has a lot of sediment,” Brown says of the river. “As it gets closer to the ocean, there are a lot of pig farms, and the dikes don’t always hold; if they have heavy rains, runoff sometimes ends up flowing into the river, so it causes lots of problems.” Brown has found that in the years he’s been in business, he’s not done so much erosion control as he has worked on stormwater runoff issues. One income stream for Brown has been buffer protections and bank res-torations for streams that run through homeowners association properties. He’s also doing a fair amount of work in storm drainage because of the way in which some contractors prepare soils. Brown also is working with local soil and water conservation districts. He’s on a contractor list for the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Division Dil_^i&#1d;Mltbo >olrka&#1d;qeb&#1d;tloia)&#1d;`lkqo^`qlop&#1d;`ellpb&#1d;lro&#1d;i^odb&#1d;mkbrj^qf`&#1d;_iltbop &#1d; ql&#1d;ptfcqiv&#1d;pmob^a&#1d;i^odb&#1d;nr^kqfqfbp&#1d;lc&#1d;plfi&#1d;jfubp)&#1d;`ljmlpqp)&#1d;jri`ebp)&#1d;^ka&#1d; ¦ ^ddobd^qbp&#1d;clo&#1d;dobbk&#1d;ollcp)&#1d;bolpflk&#1d;`lkqoli)&#1d;i^kap`^mbp)&#1d;^ka&#1d;Qboo^pbbafkd +&#1d; &#1d; Mro`e^pb&#1d;lkiv&#1d;qeb&#1d;jlpq&#1d;obif^_ib)&#1d;sbop^qfib)&#1d;^ka&#1d;mltbocri&#1d;_iltbo&#1d;bnrfmjbkq+&#1d;&#1d; @^ii&#1d;rp&#1d;qla^v+ 5--Ì/52Ì4//4 bumobpp_iltbo+`lj Express Blower™ is a trademark, and the Express Blower design logo is a registered trademark of Express Blower, Inc. JUNE 2012 EROSION CONTROL 23