Fred Edwards wrote:you're good at putting words in others mouths. I have to remind to how you begun your post on this thread by you stating, what was what without even seeing the site.
Then posting I am a idiot and know nothing, and finally in the last post enlightening others that my suggestion is now a temporary fix.
Which could be long term considering that you would save paying some fat-headed engineer like you and his mate at the cement factory.
You can save 75% of the cost using soils instead of concrete in buildings projects,albeit is you consolidate the soils with 10% of concrete.
But I bow to your outstanding knowledge and expertise you think your way would be the best....spend spend spend.
A quick review shows you're full of shit, as usual. I commented initially that "You'd never be able to adequately protect 80m length of riverbank for $40,000." This was not a site-specific comment, but one that relates to the overall cost of major river protection works so is relevant and correct. Or are you positing that one must go to jackrossi's site before commenting? In that case you're not just an idiot, but a hypocrite as I rather doubt you've made the trip out there to assess it yourself nor does the OP expect us to do so.
I posted about you being an idiot with respect to your initial cofferdam comment. You cannot build a cofferdam on the Mekong River unless you're building a hydropower project the scale of Xaignabouli. The cost and complexity of a cofferdam sufficient to block off works on your site so as to implement your solution would be ludicrous as well as illegal. Your soil and vegetation solution is completely ill-suited to protection of slopes against the Mekong River and would last until the first time a major flood went past. If you wish to call that "protection", you're welcome to, but when it doesn't protect against the very thing that is the concern, then I call that useless.
As to your contention that engineers have a tendency towards concrete over appropriate materials, that's a valid criticism in general of the more hidebound engineers married to a Western philosophy. However, similar to how one shouldn't do that in relatively small works or with poorer people, one shouldn't try to pull off a KR and scale up your appropriate technology where it's well beyond its capabilities. Which is the case with major river revetment works. And no, I'm not married to concrete and have designed alternative structures in my working career. But, frankly, you'd be better off in most cases in those smaller-scale situations to simply place some geo-textiles over compacted soils with drainage and pile flat rocks on top of each other (flat side down) as slope protection.
Anyway, I am happy to continue to discuss these issues; make your case Fred. Show me a long-lasting soil and vegetation major river revetment in Southeast Asia so I can see what you're postulating here and how it works.