Value in
Pond Management
By Kevin Tucker
Over the years, many lake
and pond management professionals throughout the country have worked
tirelessly to educate home owners associations and their managers on
the fundamentals of sound lake and pond management. This effort has
resulted in a much better understanding of the need for management,
especially in storm water ponds. Most of the association managers
understand that routine pond maintenance activities are just as
important as the maintenance of the landscape and structures that
make up the rest of the common areas of an association. In many ways
ponds are more important, because poor maintenance or lack of
maintenance all together, will often times result in much more severe
and costly problems than would have been the case for simply
overlooking some of your routine landscape maintenance activities.
Dredging alone will likely be the single most costly expense that a
homeowners association will ever face.
In reflecting on how far
we have come in recognizing the need for sound pond management plans
in the communities in which we live and manage, I realized that there
is still one piece to the puzzle that is far too often overlooked or
misunderstood. Just because most everyone knows now that they need
to maintain their ponds, far too many people still do not understand
how to manage their ponds. This lack of understanding the principles
of sound lake and pond management has opened the trap many are
falling into…
In the rush to make sure
there was a plan, we see far too many people with the wrong plan.
Take the lowest bidder for an “Annual Pond Maintenance Contract”
and check it off of the “To Do” list. Pond is taken care of now,
we are done. But hold on a minute, is the cheapest contract really
the best value? Doesn’t it matter what the contract specifies?
Doesn’t the methodology and soundness of the management strategy
matter?
Problem is, when looking
at the bottom line only, you are rarely looking at the best value.
Not to overuse a tired old adage, but you really do only get what you
pay for, in some cases, even less.
Communities and managers
alike would benefit tremendously by educating themselves more on the
fundamentals of lake and pond management, and improve their
understanding of the “why” behind the work. When obtaining
proposals for lake and pond management, spend some time reviewing the
specifications line by line, item by item, and ask yourself which is
the better value. If the prices are different, why are they
different?
Proper lake and pond
management always starts with restoring ecological balance to a pond.
If a pond is balanced, everything else will take care of itself.
The goal of lake and pond management should always be to achieve that
balance, not to attack individual problems in a piece meal way,
seemingly less expensively, but typically more costly over time.
Although you can make short term and inexpensive superficial
improvements to the appearance of a pond, long term you will spend
far more with that “quick fix” mindset.
Also, please do not fool
yourself into thinking that just because a proposal has the word
“Annual” in front of the contract heading that is a fundamentally
sound long term management plan. Managing ponds properly and
efficiently over the long term is more about how you manage than the
length of time you are managing. Not all good long terms strategies
take a long time to implement, and just because you do something many
times over a long period of time (like spraying algae with
algaecides), does not mean you are necessarily exercising sound long
term lake management principles.
If you are fundamentally
sound in your long term management plan, you may spend a bit more in
the short term, but typically you will spend far less over time, and
most importantly, be much more satisfied with the results.
Take a little time to
learn the basics (in layman’s terms) about the biological processes
that are responsible for the water quality problems in your pond.
Then make sure your consultant or contractor of choice educates you
on how these processes should be amended to produce the long term
results that you are looking to achieve.
Most pond owners will
struggle with algae from time to time, if not all of the time. Pond
enemy #1, ALGAE, grows as a result of excessive nutrients and organic
loading on the pond. Phosphates, nitrates and other available
nutrients are the fuel for nuisance algae growth. The
real problem is far too many people think that spraying their pond
once a month with an algaecide is the solution.
Remember, algae is only a symptom of a far greater problem. That
problem is excess nutrients. Algaecides do not solve the problem;
they only deal with the symptom. Algaecides used on their own are
nothing more than a band-aid…the cure is found when you deal with
the source, the excess nutrients in your pond.
This is but one of the
many “traps” that pond owners fall into when working alone or
with a contractor to manage their pond. Unfortunately, this whole
idea of simply spraying algaecides to solve your problem tends to be
one of the biggest disservices perpetrated by some of the less
qualified and less knowledgeable lake and pond management contractors
throughout our industry. Because you get a quick visual improvement,
many people are fooled into believing that their problems are being
solved.
Long term it is important
to aerate, add beneficial aerobic bacteria, microbes, enzymes, and
other ecologically balanced products to reduce the nutrient load on
the pond, and thus reduce the fuel that feeds the algae.
Professional lake managers can also work with you to help balance the
pond ecology through proper fisheries and beneficial aquatic
vegetation management, as well as identifying cultural practices on
the site that can be improved to prevent nutrient loading. Likewise,
in many cases dye can be applied to shade water from sunlight
penetration, thus removing one of the other causes of unwanted
growth.
It takes patience and
comprehensive water quality management strategies that integrate many
tools to properly manage algae and many of the other aquatic problems
that lake and pond owners will face as the years go by and their
ponds age. Make sure you avoid the trap of the quick fix and the
cheapest price, and focus on the “value” you are receiving from
the lake management professional with whom you work. Rarely is the
quickest the best, and often times the best value is not the cheapest
price.
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