Steve and Matt, I appreciate your comments. In the interim, the developer has hired an environmental engineer (something he was advised by his contractor to do in the first place but didn't think the expense was necessary), planted grass, put up activated silt fences and mats, and hung silt blocks in the runoff. You don't have any trouble seeing that I don't know the technical terms, I bet. He has also filed with the Alabama Dept. of Environmental Mgmt., something you were correct in assuming he neglected to do in the first place. My pond and that of my next-door neighbor now receive no detectible sediment at all. Another neighbor whose pond was more heavily damaged than ours and who continues to receive mud has retained an environmental attorney. He is not looking to get rich, just to be made whole again.
All of us are in the position of not wanting to see the developer be pushed to the wall because he has scarred up his part of our shared mountain (Well, we call it a mountain in Alabama, anyway) and we hope he can afford to finish up with a development which we can live with. We all live on our properties. I don't think the developer is evil, just an inexperienced idiot. He ran his road up the mountain at a 30 degree slope and is surprised that the county engineers will not accept it!
Thanks again for your suggestions. I guess we have each done all we can for now, but we monitor the streams coming down from his project every time a good rain comes.
Lou
