Welcome to Alternative Stream Research
all photos are COPYRIGHTED, to be viewed only at this website
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Alternative Stream Research is a study of streams and stream projects which began in about 1993 in Winston-Salem NC USA, was intensified from 1998 through 2002 with thousands of miles of travel and thousands of slide photos, but has been relaxed for the past few years. Read more detailed Introduction . There are two areas considered by this study: stream behavior, and stream projects. This webpage deals with stream projects. The general conclusion about stream control and reconstruction projects was that none of the various methods work in the sense of producing stable banks and beds for streams. They all work in the sense of making a lot of people a lot of money, generally at the expense of taxpayers who are told only sales-pitch lies. At the time of the main study, there were four principle theorists and practitioners: Wendy Goldsmith, of The Bioengineering Group; David Derrick, who did "bendway weirs"; David Rosgen, see following; and Robbin Sotir, who was doing modified "bioengineering" and also compiled the "Best Management Practices" guidebook. The former version of this website had presented photos from representative projects for each of them, plus many others of wide variety. Since then, David Rosgen has taken over the field to the extent of teaching the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates all stream works of 300' or more, his ideas about streams and stream projects, so that everyone must conform to his ideas. There is no longer any reason to address any other form of stream projects. |
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This study's conclusions about David Rosgen are: David Rosgen lies, and teaches others to lie. David Rosgen steals, and teaches others to steal. There is nothing "natural" about his "stream channel forms": none do occur as he builds them. His projects self-destruct, leaving the materials brought to those projects and the continuing erosion his projects cause. No one has a right to declare what is "good" or "degraded" about a stream channel. Every year for over a decade, Rosgen has sent out hundreds more of inspired acolytes equipped with a catechism and a certificate, but no real knowledge of or respect for what they are dealing with, and zero responsibility for the consequences. As much as what Rosgen does keeps changing, neither he nor any of his devoted followers admits that Rosgen was wrong all those other times. They have been and are attacking streams everywhere with machinery and abstract forms and extraneous materials, determined to force all waterways to a single style that never had any basis in reality. And somebody keeps paying for it. David Rosgen has said, "When the works of man run contrary to the natural tendencies of the river, the river eventually wins." The above photo was taken by a student in a "Level 3" class at the same time Rosgen's first project in Montana -- which would be approved only with him as designer -- was erased by the sort of flood it was supposed to control: |
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The photo at left was by Greg McDermid for Virtual Flyshop Inc. in their reports (removed from viewing) about this project on the Yellowstone River completed in February 1997. The project was supposed to prevent the river from moving into another stream as it had in the record spring flood of 1996. Rosgen had installed his "natural stream channel form" with a "relocation" and the features he thought were better than the natural river, such as a deep narrow channel and those idiotic "root-wad revetments". By the time he was teaching the class in the above photo, the spring flood that year had removed all of what Rosgen had done. The photo at right was taken in October 1998, after a second spring flood continued to truly restore the channel, which exhibits none of what Rosgen teaches people to install everywhere. The river had un-relocated its bed, lengthened the turn, lowered the summer bank height, and flattened the bottom -- more the way rivers really are. While the largest track-hoe in Montana and other equipment were in the bed of a Wild and Scenic River, Rosgen was telling a capacity crowd in Raleigh NC that his projects "are guaranteed for fifty years!" That has been one of his standard lies: this project was removed by the river he promised to control, but he did not give back any of the huge cost, nor put back anything he had built. He stole all that money, along with doing all that disruption to the river. Although using Rosgen had been required by the Corps of Engineers for approval, and by the Montana agencies involved, Rosgen was not a Civil Engineer and so was in violation of Montana law. A lawsuit on that point was denied by the state agency that would be sued. And the woman at an NRCS office who told this study about this project had not been told what really happened to it, so she was still gladly promoting the wonders of Rosgen, like everyone else. This study saw that all Rosgen and Rosgen-style projects show the same sorts of failures. Here, for instance, is the last root-wad remaining on two projects where the bank was supposed to be "protected" by them: |
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The photo on the left is a view upstream from the Arbor Day Foundation property in Nebraska. The high collapse bank was sloped down to a nice curve, with tree bottoms and boulders buried all the way around it. Typically, that organization used plans for this large project as further promotion for donations to make more money, but never showed what really happened to it. And NRCS was holding a field trip to this site -- but avoiding this part of it -- when this study was first there. The photo on the right is from a Trout Unlimited project in North Carolina, another case of "root-wrap revetment" by continuous tree bottoms; but no information about this or any other of their many projects, or even a simple reply, was ever given to this study by that organization. Rosgen gave up using root-wads as armor for turns, though they remained popular with his students for that, and Rosgen used them as a single "fish habitat" feature when it was obvious that they cause major bed as well as bank erosion. Below is one such installation on the Uncompahgre River in Colorado: |
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Photo at left is view upstream Sept. 1999, with gray tree base in view upper right and boulder anchors for the buried trunk to view left. Note erosion on downstream side as eddy pit typical for any obstruction on a bank. Photo at right is view downstream to same pit, showing failing bank. Sod is hanging over the collapse, with boulders sinking into erosion trench. Even though designed and installed by Rosgen Himself, there is similar undercut and bank loss at every root-wad and log spur on the extensive length of this project. He turned more to another tactic of making rows of large rocks to supposedly guide water away from eroding banks. That has been done for a long time in various ways that share self-destruction and other erosion as actual results (see webpage about Spurs). Here are examples of what he introduced as "vanes": |
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The photo at left was taken Oct. 1998 at the beginning of Rosgen's project on Lake Fork, Colorado, that he showed to his classes as how to do what to do. Boulders partly scavenged from the channel are angled upstream, because that way is supposed to "redirect flow away from the bank". The instream end is then angled downstream in a form called J-Hook to reinforce a deepest line of flow or "thalweg" in the proposed center. The collection of rocks at the bank in view bottom is from higher flows trapped there; while the gaps between boulders at the J part are flushing bed material from both upstream and downstream and also eroding around those boulders as single Obstructions. The photo at right was taken just downstream in Sept. 1999, showing both the loss of boulders of the next Vane and the loss of bank that the first Vane was supposed to "protect". Because Rosgen was only making things up as he went along while he could get away with it, there was a different style for another J-Hook Vane a short way downstream: |
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Photo at left is from Oct. 1998. Larger selected boulders are fitted more like a wall and sloped down toward excavated bed, note flat top and the number of boulders visible. Across view middle, flow at evenly spaced boulders of J-hook is smoothly scalloped. To upper view left, concave bank face is typical of active channel erosion from flow trapped by the rock wall. Note large shrub up on terrace at third boulder; see low plants on downstream side covering roughly to waterline at view upper right. Photo to right is in Sept. 1999, with slightly higher water level. Fourth rock of Vane has rolled upstream into typical trench eroded around any obstruction, and is dipping steeply into the water, with no straight top or gradual slope as other boulders are sinking. Middle rock of J-hook is lost downstream, see long gap at view center to bright white-cap to view right. Bank downstream to view right is stripped of earlier wild plants and is concave, eroding as the bank upstream was; while the bank upstream is nearly vertical. Note the large shrub has fallen below the terrace, with further erosion there "flanking" around the base of the Vane which is also collapsing into the eroding bed. Despite such rapid indications that this project was producing, not preventing, erosion, Rosgen was paid still more to do still more of his great works, and paid still more to teach more students to do more to get paid more. Shortly downstream of the above Vane, he tried out a two-sided version he called a Cross Vane. Farther downstream on a later project, he invented his W-Weir variation of check dams, apparently with no knowledge of similar alphabet forms previously tried with logs. The earlier project built by his students as part of his first classes -- so that they paid him and did the work -- had blown out so badly that a later owner of the site received approval for a project twice as long as Rosgen's. Bootjack Ranch Resort refused to allow this study to take photos of the massive erosion, because that might be bad for their business. Also typically, the designer for their repair project was a Rosgen graduate. Although "Two wrongs don't make a right," they do make a lot of people a lot of money. Rosgen significantly changed how he built rows of rocks, without anybody understanding that the wizard had been wrong. Here is a Vane at a project designed and built by one of his graduates, and changed by Rosgen driving the machinery as a demonstration during a class: |
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| The photo at left was taken at Salem Creek, an urban canal in NC, in Nov. 2003, with flow to the right so that the very large quarry boulders make only a wall sloping higher downstream and farther into the re-constructed bank. The photo at right is looking upstream, showing widening of layers of the wall and constriction of the channel at the upstream end. Ramp fill has been partly washed away in the first year, see exposed black plastic fabric with areas ripped away over boulders. Note that the sandy bed is flat and shallow, as it was before the project, not the deep-centered "U-shaped cross-section" making the "width-depth ratio" that Rosgen thinks a "good" stream must have. |
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The photo at left was taken at the same Vane April 2005, showing that storms have buried it by depositing sand, without respect to his wall, along the bank exactly as was happening before the project. In that way, as is typical for all projects, the stream is "restoring" itself to the conditions before the project. Photo at right is looking downstream from this Vane, showing immediate erosion along the constructed bank instead of "protection" by the Vane. Besides rebuilding the wall, Rosgen also made a "J-hook" extension on this Vane, changing the approved plan without approval -- but it is he who tells the approvers what to approve, so who would disapprove: |
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The photo on the left is of Rosgen's addition, on the right is another project by another student. In both, the bed has quickly eroded around the rocks, causing them to shift and sink into the eroded bed. On the right, one rock has been moved downstream into the pit this typical erosion has made. The speed of such erosion varies with native bed material, which is silty gravel and rubble on the left, and silty sand on the right; but this self-destruction is a common result of such installations. Any obstruction to flow causes turbulence; and turbulence, not flow, is the force of erosion. The materials used and the style of putting things in the way of water do not change that basic result of water flow. Rosgen continued to devise totally artificial "structures" that require huge machines and larger rocks. Here is a "vortex weir" he told another "Level 4" student (who still did not know what to do) to do in an urban stream where an earlier project by Wendy Goldsmith had failed horribly, with no consequences to her: |
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| The photo at left is on Tanner's Run, NC, Sept. 1999, during construction of a third Vortex Weir downstream of a road culvert. The huge "layback" or excavated slope at view left is a common feature of stream projects, including previous "channelization" that Rosgen demands that we hate as the works of "pin-headed snarfs!" The supervisor is standing on a boulder that was placed on a similar "footer" rock set beneath bed level. The one being placed is to direct flow between those boulders, and to "protect" that bank as with other boulders around the outside of the turn to view left. The entire bed will be lined with quarry rock as visible at completed areas upstream. Photo at right is a side view one month later, with grass on the excavated slope and the "fiber-log toe revetment" beginning to fail as it typically does. The footer boulder under the central boulder was cracked by being hammered into the bed by the track-hoe, and general bed instability during storm flow let one part tilt. The upper boulder has fallen upstream into the pit eroded around it as at any obstruction. Bed fill rocks have washed downstream to block one of the "vortex" channels, causing erosion on the other side: |
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The photo as left shows later erosion of the bank around the same Weir, as water does at any obstruction. Rosgen did not study stream behavior to know about that, and developed only ways to excuse using machines to make money, making major messes in streams everywhere his projects have gone. The photo at right is just downstream at a wild Black Willow ripped up by a storm, with the bed to view left eroded below its root base. |
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Photo as left is view upstream to same Vortex Weir following first rain after completion. Much of the rock bed fill had already shifted, the angular central boulder had already begun to tilt upstream, but both Vortex channels were clear as designed. Photo at right is five years later, with the central boulder fallen into the bed as shown above, and one Vortex channel completely blocked by cobbles washed continually downstream, as all such rocks are in all streams, and forming a growing "point bar" deposit to view right, consistent with continual erosion of other side as shown above. That is how streams meander, so what was put into this stream did not "stabilize" it to prevent meandering as promised and paid for twice. Rather, the stream is meandering here worse than before, and so is slowly "restoring" itself to what are its natural conditions in this urban situation -- but with all those rocks and other foreign materials added. Neither Wendy Goldsmith nor David Rosgen knew what would be produced by what they produced; but all such projects are going to continue to demonstrate the lessons of real streams. By the time of that last photo, the state was no longer monitoring this project for compliance with its requirements for projects. The man in charge of storm water projects in that city had never visited it to see what had been done and what happened to it. And by that time, many other such projects in various forms by Rosgen's students had been done in that city and all over the world, year after year since 1996 when Rosgen's first commercial project was erased by a dam break and he was hired again to try again at further cost. He has been given a PhD by a man he hired as his teaching assistant, and Rosgen continues to teach hundreds of people every year his misleading simplifications, calculations that do not alter what would be done (calculations that he never does), and brutal tactics of massive reconstructions, collecting more fees also from the same ones with always a next "Level" of "certification" to do what he does to streams. Or, do whatever they want to do, after being certified to "think like a river!" Meanwhile, back at the creek, the actual processes that really affect streams are continuing: |
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Photo at left is view upstream to same Vortex Weir in June 2010, with the central tilted boulder at view top center. There is more bar deposit to view right, and only a narrow and deepening trickle along the planned central flow. Photo at right viewing downstream shows more meander erosion of the very expensive bank, as more of higher flows goes around what is for the stream only an Obstruction to go around. At view center the plastic "geo-grid" and a stake for the Fiber Log defining the intended bank toe are exposed for what they are: trash, put there by the project. The wood stakes will go the way of the coconut fiber materials; but the extensive plastic buried in the built bank will be plastic, somewhere, forever. Similar actual results follow thousands of projects worldwide, following after a former rodeo rider and aging machinery operator made into a god of stream reconstructions by people who choose people to follow, instead of studying real streams. One of the more outrageous products of Rosgen's training seen by this study was on Goose Creek, NC, which had already been an attempt to apply Fabric Formed Concrete to "stabilize" a storm-water canal: |
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Photo at left is view upstream Aug. 1998. Sediment deposits in upstream portion are at alternating sides and growing wild Black Willow, both ragweeds, Lady's Thumb and Pa. Knotweed, fall asters, and various grasses, complete with clusters of minnows and two breeding pairs of Song Sparrow. Such natural conditions were not only there, they were free except for the loss of volume and flow rate. Photo at right is in March 1999, after Log Vanes were installed. Logs cut for this NRCS project were angled upstream at alternating sides as Vanes to force "sinuosity" calculated to Rosgen's standards. They were anchored with rebar punched through the concrete lining, making it leak; and the machinery crushed the concrete lining in many places with no efforts at repair. Mixed fill was added at each log to simulate alternating point bars for Rosgen's "natural stream channel form". Fill was washing out immediately, and was rebuilt with rock borders and other materials, producing record flooding in the residential area to view left and the school playground to view right. This study had previously presented hundreds of photos of stream projects by various theorists and designers across the range of methods and materials from Georgia to Washington state. No one took those analyses as lessons from reality, they only took the photos for contrary purposes; and no one was ever taken to court for what really happens to stream projects. Billions of dollars of mostly taxpayer money have been pounded into such rat-holes every year for decades, as increasingly required by state legislation for "mitigation". Mitigation is the fraud that generates the means for these frauds: with that extra money and so these other projects, no resource extraction or highway or real estate project can be prevented by environmental regulations. Apparently, no amount of plain information as you can see only here can stop these further attacks on the last places machinery can get to. And somebody, keeps paying for it. |
See the illustrated stream behavior treatise about The Meander Mechanism .
See illustrated webpage about Spurs.
Lloyd Ramsey, Alternative Stream Research
4948 Old Baux Mtn. Rd., Winston-Salem, NC 27105-1504