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 A great blue heron lifts into the air as spectators approach, but dozens of butterflies continue to flit from one brilliant purple pickerel weed bloom to another. Native cannas and blue flag iris line the edges of the sloping bank, and pennywort grows over shallow waters to provide shade for fish. Wildlife watchers report regular visits by rabbits, foxes and bobcats that live in a forested area beyond the pond.
An idyllic setting in one of Tampa Bay's spectacular natural preserves? Not!
It's actually a stormwater pond in a suburban neighborhood, part of Hillsborough County's innovative Adopt-A-Pond program created to help residents transform barren ponds into beautiful native habitats.
"We get residents involved in the program for the aesthetics and the fish, but the real issue is sustainability - improving water quality and habitat," says John McGee, an environmental scientist in Hillsborough County's stormwater management section.
Even as technology offers new options for stormwater treatment, Mother Nature is still the best choice for removing nutrients from runoff. Plants take up nutrients from fertilizers, animals and auto emissions, minimizing their impact on critical estuarine habitats, such as seagrass beds.
Although ongoing studies have documented the effectiveness of plants on stormwater, it's difficult to quantify results from the nearly 200 ponds that have been adopted across Hillsborough County, McGee said. "It's a challenge to get volunteers to comply with scientific protocol to document results from individual ponds, but we do know the techniques work. Studies show the improvements, it's just hard to hard to quantify results from individual ponds."
Thousands of manmade ponds - too many to count - dot Hillsborough County, many built after stormwater regulations first took effect in the mid-1980s. The focus of those initial regulations was flood control, not water quality, and most ponds weren't maintained to optimum standards.
"What happens is that people call the county when the pond turns green or cattails take over their view," McGee says. "County policy doesn't allow us to maintain ponds for aesthetics so there wasn't much we could do to help."
The Adopt-A-Pond program was created to work with residents to clean up privately owned ponds, taking advantage of their labor and getting buy-in from an entire neighborhood, he explains. "The county doesn't have the labor to maintain ponds, but the residents really get involved once they see how well it works."
Lori Lucas, group representative for the Colonial Lakes Pond Lubbers, is the perfect example of how Adopt-A-Pond works. "When we moved in, we had so many eight-foot tall cattails we couldn't even see the water."
The sump in her yard, designed to catch and filter stormwater from the neighborhood before it discharges into nearby Lake St. Charles, is now surrounded by lush native plantings including pickerel weed, blue flag iris, cannas and duck potato. "We get tons of butterflies and dragonflies and even birds like a little blue heron that took up residence on a floating planter and a bald eagle in a nearby pine tree," she says.
The plantings have been so successful that Lucas is planning on thinning the pickerel weed and sharing it with neighbors - many of whom she met through the Adopt-A-Pond program. "We were so new to the community, it was the first time we'd ever gotten together as a neighborhood."
And the county-wide initiative has been so successful that Pinellas County is starting a pilot program.
"First and foremost, it's about education," McGee said. "The county can't maintain the ponds as well as we'd like, but if we clean up the ponds and plant them, we get buy-in from residents and they make all the difference in the world."
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Left: Native pickerel weed and canna thrive in what was once an overgrown sump in Riverview.
Photo: Victoria Parsons
How It Works:
The Adopt-A-Pond program is open to homeowners and neighborhood associations who live on or near ponds with one or more drainage easements dedicated to Hillsborough County. Residents must create a group of at least four people from two households, complete an application and agree to its stipulations.
The county provides a free one-time cleanup of the pond to remove nonnative plants like cattails and water hyacinth, then helps residents plant native plants that enhance the aesthetic and environmental effectiveness of the pond. Each group may receive up to $600 in plantings initially. For large ponds, the county will help the group work with other organizations that provide grants for environmental projects.
Residents must agree to maintain the plantings with four workdays each year to remove nuisance plants and trash. They also must create safe zones around the pond where fertilizer and pesticides are not used, and mark all storm drains in the neighborhood so other residents know that what goes down the drain ends up in their pond.
Additionally, the county provides ongoing education for residents, ranging from how to minimize the use of fertilizer and water to helping them identify bird calls and frogs as part of a lifestyle change.
Interested groups may request a "Pond Walk," where an environmental professional working as a volunteer for the program actually visits the pond and discusses current problems and options with residents. For more information, contact McGee at 813-307-1785 or mcgeej@hillsboroughcounty.org. In Pinellas call, 727-464-4425.
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