Girl Scouts Camp
Playfair
The Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan maintains a day camp called Camp Playfair located in Lexington Township in Sanilac County along the western shoreline of Lake Huron. Over the years the lake bluff on the shoreline has receded, threatening a camp “trading post” building.
The classic problem of bluffs, common along western Lake Huron, is multifaceted. Water attacks from both behind and in front of the shoreline surface. Buildings and infrastructure must take into account both the hydrogeological and the littoral conditions. Careful balancing of armoring, both soft and hard, with placement of the facility is necessary to provide the proper design life.
The Girl Scouts further wished to combine an educational program with the repair and asked BMJ to strategize a simple solution that could be applied by a group of girl scouts, parents, and group leaders. BMJ prepared a workshop curriculum to present the conditions, causes, and results of bluff erosion along the Great Lakes, which included the identification of vegetation available at the camp for plantings.
The strategy and tools BMJ used in its design of this erosion mitigation project incorporated subsurface drainage of groundwater around the building with a reinforced earth vegetated geogrid. The design was constructed by a contractor with the assistance of camp staff, parents, and the girl scouts in a single day of effort.
The Girl Scouts contacted BMJ Engineers & Surveyors, Inc. to assess the site and make recommendations for the repair of the bluff. The Camp Playfair “trading post” stands near the edge of the bluff. A Camp Playfair ranger remembered a day when the building was much farther away from the edge. BMJ’s recommendation was to utilize bioengineering principles to stabilize the site and mitigate the conditions that cause recession of the bluff.
The camp ranger and contractor prepared the site on the day previous to the workshop to provide a safe workplace for the attendees. Red osier dogwood, willow, and cedar cuttings were harvested for the plantings. Terraces of compacted organic soil reinforced with coconut fiber blankets within staked forms comprised the structure of the geogrid.
Monitoring of the site indicates that the bluff repair remains stable and is populated by an increasing root mass from the plantings.