Ha! I just recently had to sit through a 'whippin' by our DPW officials because I had told one of their highway design firms that I didn't think hydroseeding was an adequate substitute for a retaining wall on a 1:1 road cut just like that one - they were all over me about interfering with their design, etc. I just told them that it's not my call to decide whether or not it's stable, but if someone asks me, as a PE, if they can make such a substitution, there's no way in hell I'm saying 'yes'. I told them, of course, that they were free to certify it themselves...
I'm going to go show this to our permits manager, who had to sit through the whippin' with me.