Keeping Retention Ponds Clean

Both Construction companies who build retention ponds and retention pond owners are turning to windmills that aerate water as a means to manage and maintain the cleanliness of their ponds.

Retention ponds are important for they ensure that flash floods do not occur in areas that have large amounts of concrete and cannot adequately absorb water caused by heavy rainstorms as quickly as needed to prevent flooding.

Retention ponds usually become foul smelling, pollution filled messes and regulation to ensure that these ponds do not become health hazards is being reviewed in many states. Companies are now being asked by their communities to keep retention ponds cleaner and less odorous. Many are not only dirty, but they are becoming toxic sewage lagoons and its upsetting the local residents.

Pressure is being put on shopping mall and industrial park owners to do something about cleaning up these pools of pollution. One cost effective solution in doing this is by installing windmills that aerate retention ponds.

Koenders Windmills has created a Uni-pole Windmill aeration system. It’s a windmill that sits up 25 Ft off the ground and compresses air into an airline when the wind blows the windmill. It works in as low as 3 MPH winds and can aerate up to a 4 acre retention ponds. The average size of these ponds range from 1/2 acre to usually 2 acre – ideal sizes for these types of solutions.

Koenders Uni-Pole looks nice and is design to reduce any risk of vandalism against the equipment. The windmill pond aeration systems work by burning off the excess organic matter and pollutants that are normally responsible for stagnating the retention ponds.

© 2006, Pond Owner Magazine.
www.pondowner.com

Retention Ponds Can Be Beautiful Too

Tens of thousands of ponds are dug each year, some small and others big, some for a purpose and others simply for the ornamental beauty.

Commercial retention ponds, which are built to manage storm water so that municipal sewage systems do not back up and create area floods during a sudden downpour of rain number in the thousands in North America. They are mostly located near large parking lots and commercial buildings like shopping malls and industrial parks.

Retention ponds have started to become an extreme concern for communities for the following reasons;

• Retention Ponds are usually quite large in comparison to a back yard ornamental pond and range in size anywhere from 1/4 of an acre to a few acres.
• The aesthetics and health of these ponds are usually of no importance to the land owners such as shopping malls, Property Management Firms, Big Box stores like Walmart, Home Depot, Costco and others…
• Retention Ponds are ideal breeding grounds for insects such as mosquitoes, increasing the potential risk of West Nile Virus.
• Retention Ponds tend to stagnate, overgrow with pond scum and algae and smell like rotten eggs.

Retention Ponds can instead be beautiful with a little bit of knowledge and understanding of how they can keep this body of water healthy and clean. These pond owners do not realize that with a relatively small investment and a little effort these retention ponds could transform themselves in to healthy and beautiful aquatic gardens. They could still be designed to catch storm water as their function requires but instead of letting these ponds grow into stagnant eyes sores they could they could be pretty additions to the environment. By installing a windmill pond aeration system a retention pond owner could cost effectively maintain the health of their water, with very little investment. Heck they could even put in a pond fountain or waterfall.

The other advantage of the windmills are that they do not cost any money to operate once they have been installed and they last for decades. There is very little maintenance on these type of products but the will make all the difference in the health and cleanliness of your retention pond.

© 2006, Pond Owner Magazine.
www.pondowner.com