Erosion from the storm

I was at a conference in Milwaukee when the big storm happened last week, but I could easily see there had been a lot of rain in a very short period of time. I bike under the train tracks on Morgan between 15th and 16th almost every day and there are huge amounts of gravel all over the road because the railroad right-of-way is steep and eroding.


This is the gulley that formed just north of the tracks near University Village.

You can see the path the gravel took from the slope down to the road and under the underpass. It's all over the road.

The real bummer about this for me is that late last winter I spread a prairie seed mix all over that ugly brown area in the hopes that some of it might establish and make the place a little less of an eyesore. By mid-June it was covered in green but then a sad, but not entirely unexpected, thing happened. It started turning brown. Unnaturally brown. And it only got browner. The whole area was sprayed with herbicide, and now it is dead and ugly like you see in the photos. I know there wouldn't have been nearly as much erosion if they hadn't herbicided my plants. I wish I'd taken a picture of it when it was green.

I know that they spray railroad right-of-ways to reduce the fire risk, but did they really have to spray all the way down there, way below the tracks?