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.