The longer answer

Read the gully like a map. Every washout points uphill at its cause. Follow the bare channel to its top and you'll find one of these:

  • A downspout outlet. The most common one. A 2x3 downspout in a hard KC storm is a firehose, and a splash block moves the blast two feet. Burying the downspout ($300–$700 per line) to a pop-up emitter removes the jet entirely — the emitter releases water gently at lawn grade, spread instead of concentrated.
  • A slope that collects. When your yard is the low path for several properties, the water arrives wide and leaves narrow — cutting a channel where it narrows. An interceptor French drain across the flow ($25–$60/LF, most systems $1,500–$3,800) swallows the sheet before it accelerates.
  • Hardscape runoff. Driveways and patios shed water at their edges; soil at those edges loses every round. A channel drain at the hard edge or a catch basin at the landing zone gives the water a grate instead of a target.

Why KC clay makes it worse: clay sheds water instead of absorbing it, so almost everything that falls becomes surface flow — more volume, more speed, more cutting power than the same rain on sandy soil. It's also why the "just add topsoil and seed" cycle repeats every spring: the new dirt washes out on the same schedule until the flow is redirected.

Where we stop and hand off honestly: our work is the water side — collecting, redirecting, and discharging flow so it stops cutting. Major slope stabilization — retaining walls, riprap on steep banks, engineered terracing — is landscape and hardscape contractor territory, and genuinely eroding creek banks can involve your city's stormwater department. Fix the water first either way: a wall built behind an unfixed flow problem is a wall with a countdown.

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