Retension Pond

I also live in the Jacksonville area and our community has a stormwater pond which we must maintain. We also get a credit on our city stormwater fees. If I were you, I'd check with the St. Johns River Water Management District for information.

http://www.sjrwmd.com/index.html

Roger,

Not sure about what your document say about the care and maintenance of the pond. Your city should have some answers about what type of conditions the pond must be maintained in.

These ponds built within HOAs usually are storm water runoff ponds. Droughts are very hard on them where they almost dry up. Then when the season is wet and they fill up weeds , nasty plants can invade them. I know in the southern part of Florida, we got heavy fines from our County if they were not maintained. I definitely would get in touch with your County water division. We had a service that treated them for weed control and it was very expensive but it was our responsibility to care for them.

Here in Tennessee, we have very strict water run-off restrictions being put into place.

Roger,

The approach to “cleaning up” the retention or detention area would depend on whether it was built to be a wet area (retention area = pond or lake) or a dry area that holds storm water runoff temporarily (detention area). A retention area (pond or lake) could not be easily made into a dry detention area as it is also fed by ground water (and, IMO, would not likely be approved/permitted by the applicable regulatory state/federal agencies to be filled in if it was intended for storm water management).

If it was intended to be a pond/lake – yes, it will need to be cleaned up. While you could obtain more info from your municipal or state authorities (or off the internet), I suggest the Board contact several good firms that do this type of work, for proposals.

FYI, these areas can be turned into wetlands (whether with or without standing water) utilizing native plants, which once established, are mostly self sustaining. We have two ponds and I did much research into this. We invited two consultants to Board meetings to provide presentations on how this can be done, the benefits, etc.

Our Village also endorses this approach and prefers new construction to incorporate these types of areas for stormwater management. They are also changing the older retention/detention areas into native habitat.

If the area you are concerned about was intended to be a dry detention area, and is not draining properly and the vegetation cannot be appropriately maintained, then you will need an engineering evaluation to determine the problem and then request proposals to repair. We recently went through this and had to re-grade our dry detention basin, made repairs to the drainage system, and repaired the vegetation (ours is grass covered -- why the Board did not go with the natural habitat approach is another story).

Bonnie