EC = Environmentally Correct
You can't fool Mother Nature--or the City of Portland Erosion Control officer. Our dirt and trash piles were covered and at least four or five chip-filled sacks were placed strategically to stop mud. Pea gravel covered hunks of cement and huge river rock in the area used as a staging point for heavy equipment.
But it wasn't enough. The inspector, who looked a little like a young Dolly Parton (that's a compliment,btw) said we needed to add an erosion control fence along the sidewalk and put golf-ball-size gravel in the staging zone.
The gravel arrived a few hours later and Norm and Josh Tucker erected the fence, which was a bunch of stakes with unattractive black plastic attached. It's ugly, but its very EC.
If it's up through October I'm going to think of some creative way to include it in our traditional Halloween presentation. In the past we've featured everything from "Krispy Skreme," evil clowns and the mad scientist to my ill-fated attempt to recreate Jaws using a pulley system and a foil-covered shark fin combined with the 'attack' theme music from the movie. We actually featured the last presidential election, with pumpkins carved to look like Bush and Gore and voting boxes adorned with the appropriate red, white and blue streamers. We tried to maintain bi-partisan, for Halloween night, but I did get some small satisfaction later when I smashed the Bush pumpkin.