Over the past several months WBTW and Carolina Clear have been following the care of a stormwater pond in Carolina Forest. At the beginning of summer, we installed plants along the banks of the pond, and a floating landscape in the middle. Both of these will help improve the water quality of the pond. Another strategy to keeping the pond healthy is to improve the quality of the water coming in.
Ben Powell, from Clemson Extension says “Anything we can do around the home to slow water down and spread it out and encourage it to infiltrate into the ground rather than become runoff into the pond is going to reduce the loading to the pond, and improve water quality and control flooding.”
Downspouts from your roof should be directing water to landscaped areas, not to driveways that will lead the water to storm drains.
In addition to the volume of storm runoff, we should also be concerned with the temperature of storm runoff.
“That first flush of water that comes off the pavement out on the pond can be extremely warm. 120 degrees or more. and that is very significant for the things that live in the pond. Anything we can do to slow it down, spread it out and encourage it to infiltrate is going to reduce thermal stress on the ponds.” – Ben Powell, Clemson Extension
Pervious pavements in parking lots or driveways allow rain water to soak in rather than run off, and that slows down storm water. Rainwater harvesting can help control large volume or temperature swings of storm runoff. Rainwater harvesting helps with water quality, plus you can reuse that water for irrigation days after the rain has ended.
