Take a look at the picture below. The area to the left of Peace Church is all wetland, I would guess it to be around twenty acres and I am sure it was left to act as a filter for storm water, holding back the sediment and nutrients. That is a lot of set aside land. Now look just to the south of Orth Road to the finger of water where the wetland drains. It leads to a fairly large pond. If you look closely you will see algae forming at the head. I drive over this spot two or three times per week and I have watched the finger and a lot of the pond fill with algae on a regular basis. So what, you say! Read on below.
We are currently formulating engineering specs to find a way to handle the inflow from the farm fields on the other side of Caledonia Road where it drains eventually into the dip. We are hoping for some grant money to help pay for the project but it will still cost us many thousands to complete. We hope to extend the wetlands in association owned land as a filter.
Am I against it? No, I am not. What worries me is property owners will expect this to take care of the algae problem in the dip and extending into the lake. It will not solve the problem. What will? I say nothing will!
I expect it will stop a lot of the sediment from entering the lake and that will stall the need for expensive dredging. I also expect it will use up some of the nutrients prior to entering our lake but this will not be a panacea for all algae problems. We will, in my opinion, fight this for the entire life of our lake. We can gain on it and as you know we have but this will not go away. We have spent a large amount of cash on the retention pond by the golf course with the same affect. Less sediment but still an algae problem. We are doing what we can.
Ken