I feel as frustrated as you with that client. Much of the water I fish in receives water from subdivisions. Subdivision rules and people's perceptions are an enemy to clean water relatively free of heavy nutrient pollution. Their impact goes far beyond their subdivision retention water. For some reason, people hate diversity and love monocultures and uniformity. I haven't figured out how to change that perspective but as long as it prevails there will be more of the same. IMHO, since they are the cause of the cess pool, they should be required to ameliorate the pollution through waste treatment. They should be penalized for taking shortcuts and metrics should be applied so that the water meets a standard. IMHO, that subdivision has a moral obligation to do the recommendations you made particularly the aeration and any nutrient sequestration recommended (e.g. alum). When THEY have to pay the cost, maybe THEY would decide to make life a little easier on you by curtailing the use of fertilizer and herbicides. The end result from saving that waste of money would be cleaner water and a cheaper water management bill. The problem is that people are often pigs and they have to be made to do the right things. We need to enforce laws that would prevent this kind of abuse. The pond you described is essentially a cesspool and there is no cheap option for treating it appropriately.
Off the soap box. On to something that affects most members on their private water. Where possible, most should focus investment in more water rather than more fertile water and higher fish density. Any water which consistently maintains blooms of less than 2.5 feet is eutrophic. Some say less than 2 feet others 3 but once water reaches this fertility, it produces the most fish ... up to a point. The benefits rapidly decline as nutrient loads increase and primary biomass standing weights rise. Eutrophic water, though it will produce the greatest fish density, also is subject to periodic fish kill. Eutrophic water should be aerated something which will reduce stress on fish and reduce muck buildup.
It may surprise some that the difference between food limited carrying capacity of eutrophic water and mesotrophic can vary as little as 50 to 100 %. Mesotropic water tends to have more bio-diverse plankton and insect communities. Their fish are subjected to less stress. 50 to 100% sounds like a whole lot but in the broader picture that extra comes at a much greater cost when one considers costs of aeration, nutrient sequestration, herbicides, and ironically ... sometimes even feeding. Some soils and water sheds won't allow moderately productive water and are intrinsically eutrophic due to soil fertility or nutrients in runoff. These folks are going to have to deal with eutrophic water with the methods you've outlined in numerous posts and that goes with pond's location. But back to investment, if a person can make more water he can still have as many fish and have substantially less management costs and much longer pond life.
Last edited by jpsdad; 05/16/21 04:07 AM.
