Pond Issues

All bodies of water are different, different sizes, shapes, depths and many other factors that make no two ponds alike.  This means that they are all different ecosystems.

We have 7 different water retainage areas on the course. I will go over each of them in this post and describe the issues that we have, some historical information and the efforts that we have put forth.

#7

First off #7 has a very special place in my heart, My beautiful wife and I were married on the edge of that pond.  It is one of the 2 fondest memories that I have, the other being the birth of my son.  This hole is also the "signature" hole for the golf course.  It is a retainage pond.  It has had issues in the past with algae, not bad issues but issues none the less.  This year there was a die off of fish in that pond.  The cause of the fish die off was a lack of dissolved oxygen in the water column.  There were several factors that led to the oxygen burn.  The main factors were water temperature, having a fountain missing, and a hot stretch of summer followed by a cold rainfall.  The process of a fish kill is a rough process.  When any organism in a water body dies the decomposition process burns oxygen in the water, so a body of water that is low in oxygen gets lower.  It's like rolling a boulder down a hill the further it goes the harder it is to stop.  However, we had employees out there cleaning up dead fish with pool skimmers trying to keep the amount of decomposition and odor to a minimum.  I think we did a great job responding to the issue in a timely fashion.
A brief history on this pond.  It has gone dry 2 times since the construction that I know of.  Once was about 5 years ago and once was well before my time. 
The homeowners that live around the ponds have been managing  and maintaining the fountains in the ponds for the last 10+ years.  We met with that "Pond HOA" and they have given us the control of the fountains.  They did a great job with those fountains for a long time.  We have already changed out the nozzles on the units to throw more water and create more oxygen and surface cooling.  we have gone from 400 Gallons Per Minute to 1500 GPM, a large difference.  I am currently investigating different fish species to introduce to this area.  predatory fish like bass to keep the number of smaller fish down, triploid grass carp to help keep the ponds clean and we have used tilapia in the past to help combat algae.  I am also researching colorants for this area to block UV rays and prohibit algae populations.

#9

This pond has no issues.  It used to be a hazard on the course that had dried up because of the inability to fill it.  Since gaining that ability the pond has sealed up and is holding water nicely and is again a hazard.

#11

This pond is the start of a storm water runoff system.  The water that runs into it comes from HWY 231 and surrounding areas.  It used to be one of the sources of our irrigation water.  It has issues with primrose, an aquatic plant that is easily controlled with 2,4-D or Diquat.  Both of these herbicides are acceptable to apply in water bodies and safe to fish.  Since it is a storm water system the water column is changed over frequently with large rainfall events.  I have simply not had the time to treat this pond lately and that's on me.  This pond is also about 4 feet deep and has about 3 feet of sediment in the bottom.

#12

This pond is on the far right as you drive in the neighborhood.  It is the same scenario as #11 an storm water collection system that used to be part of our irrigation source.  the pond on #11 feeds to #12 and It also gets fed by all surface runoff from areas south of this from Runnymeade Drive north.  So this pond gets double the input that #11 gets.  It is about 4 feet deep with a rock bottom.  UV rays penetrate it easily to allow algae and other plants to grow in it easily.  In the past there were major algae issues with this area.  The neighbors banded together that lived around this area about 9 years ago.  They purchased and installed 3 fountains with IHGC's blessing, 2 in #12 and 1 in #13.  These were small 110 volt fountains that did not exchange much water and could not cool off the water column because there is no cool water to draw from in the summer on a 4 ft deep pond.  After a while these fountains were just sucking up the muck on the bottom of the ponds and getting clogged up with debris.  They became more of a maintenance nightmare than they were worth.  It was a good effort but a poor fit for the process.
That being said we do not have an algae issue in this pond this year so much as we have a duckweed infestation.  Duckweed is a naturally occurring plant that is one of the smallest complete plants on earth.  It is about the size of a pencil tip.  If you are interested in researching the plant click on the highlighted name above and it will take you to Wikipedia.  The problem with duckweed is that it is very hard to kill in our environment  the plant already has a seed by the time it hits the surface and releases that seed when killed so surface herbicides, diquat, do not work well.  There is a product that I tried at the correct application rates, "Sonar".  This herbicide has the ability to treat the entire water column, kill plants and seeds.  Its issue is that it needs to be active in a body of water for 48 days and it is very expensive.  I estimate that our application was active for about 7 days before the rains flushed that chemical out of the water body.  It is really hard for me to justify spending someone else's hard earned money on a issue that is almost guaranteed no win scenario.  Do not misread that statement, that does not mean that I am not going to do anything about it, it means that I am going to be very careful about what I do.  I had attempted 3 diquat applications this summer and 1 sonar application.  You also have to remember the statement from #7 pond about organisms decomposing in relation to oxygen content.  So if we kill of all of the vegetative material in a 4 foot deep pond at once it will burn off oxygen and "shock" the pond thus potentially killing fish.  I have to follow the rule of thirds when treating the ponds as not to create a different problem.  the rule of thirds is to never treat a heavily invested pond by more than 1/3 of the surface area at one time as to protect the other ecology in that environment from damage.

#13

This is the closest pond to the road on the right as you drive in.  It is also part of the storm water runoff system and has the same issues as #12.  The duckweed moves with water and gravity, down stream.  This pond would have small algae blooms in the Spring each season as the temps came up.  But, it had one natural defense, it is a very deep pond with flow through.  The depth allowed the water to remain cooler and reduced the ability of UV rays to penetrate to the bottom and breed algae.

#18

This pond is on the left side of the entrance as you drive in the neighborhood.  It is our irrigation holding pond.  It contains IHGC's water once it is in this pond it is IHGC's and no one else's.  the brick house on 231 side is our pumping station.  It is state of the art and we are very proud of it.  The water in the pond is effluent water the same kind of water that many golf courses around the town and the world are trying to use.  We do this in order to reduce our environmental footprint.  We are not the first golf course to use effluent water and we will not be the last.  Effluent water can be from many different sources but ours is processed treated water.  It is not sewer nor has it ever been water that went down a toilet.  One quality and burden of Effluent water is that it contains nutrients Phosphorus particularly which is a key food source for algae.  Also the effluent is warmer and creates another algae breeding scenario.  You will notice that it can get kind of a pea soup look in the summer, this is green algae trying to bloom in the water column.  About 7 years ago in the infancy of our Effluent usage we had a complete coverage of algae on that pond.  After that we installed 2 Sonic Devices that emit ultrasonic sonar wavelengths that actually destroy the algae at a cellular level as it is trying to form.  These devices have done a great job in control of algae blooms.  Remember this is our irrigation source and we apply this water to the grass on the golf course so there is the concern of herbicide transference and damage to the course by herbicide applications in this pond.  I do not believe that we require any herbicide applications to this pond at this time.

#17

This pond is having trouble holding water at a certain depth  It is a small hazard pond on the course.  we may try to add some bentonite to the banks in the future to seal up any leaks.

This season we have had several complaints made to regulatory authorities with concerns about our water areas by neighbors of the course.  I have been working with TDEC since the complaints started on #18, 13 and 7.  They are well aware of the issues that we face.  I have explained with them what our management attempts are and have been.  They have agreed with my strategies.

There are other methods of algae control such as sub surface bubbler systems that release air at the bottom of the pond and help create aeration and circulation of the water.

I am happy to accept phone calls on the issues or any golf course related issue.  I can also be found on social media @bradmarcy on Twitter.

Number 7 Water Feature is Back!!!!

As all of you golfers and homeowners that live on or near hole #7 know the water feature on this hole was drained.  The cause was a fissure in the limestone that opened up to an underground stream.  I am sorry that it took so long to get the water feature back, but it was a precarious process,  We had to wait until the area quit leaking water to determine what the problem was.

The Problem Hole is 2 feet wide

After we found the problem we called in some experts on the subject for advice on fixing the problem. ( I personally have never dealt with a problem such as this before.)  So we spoke with the geology experts who were very helpful and very enthusiastic about their profession.  Their recommendation was to expose the hole and fill with a material called Bentonite.  Bentonite is a clay byproduct of mining and it is devoid of water.  When it comes in contact with water it swells to about 3-5 times its size and creates a clay barrier layer or expands to clog holes whichever is needed.
The pond was as low as it was going to get and we were in the middle of the dry season (late October).  We Brought in an Excavator to search to find the problem.  The more we dug the wetter the hole got.  We were running two 2 inch trash pumps to keep the water out and we could barely keep up with the water coming out of the fissure I took 3 attempts with the excavator to clean up the hole.  At this point we were getting out of the dry season and having to schedule around weather events, but we finally got close enough to the fissure to attempt to plug it with the Bentonite.
link to a video of the underground stream in action

What's happening with our ponds?

I have been getting the same question about our ponds all summer, so I figured I'd answer it in a public forum for anyone else who might be interested but may not see me to ask the question. 
What is going on with the ponds at the entrance?
Of the three ponds visible from the entrance drive, #'s 12, 13 and 18, one of them looks good.  Two of them look bad.  #12 has blown up with Algae like it had in 2011 and previous years.  #13 looks fine.  #18 is about 3.5' low right now. 
Starting with #12.  I refer to this as a pond, but it is more accurately described as a water retention area.  It was not designed to hold fish, feed livestock, or go swimming or canoeing in.  It was designed to make you afraid of hitting a golf ball into it.  The guys who built the pond while well intentioned were probably not aquatic experts and did not see the nightmare that they were creating.  This pond is 4 ' deep with a rock bottom (it cannot be dug any deeper).  When you have a pond that shallow light penetrates to the floor of the pond and creates an environment where algae can grow.  This is the same problem that this pond has had for a long time.  We found a solution last season with the Tilapia.  Unfortunately, I thought that a wait and see approach would be better on the pond this season to see how bad the problem came back.  It came back with a vengeance.  I was too late getting the Tilapia out and now we are resulting to chemical control methods.  If you are using chemical control methods why don't you spray it all out?  Great question!  Because when we kill aquatic weeds they sink and decompose under the surface of the water.  When Algae decomposes it uses oxygen.  Guess who else uses oxygen in the water....Fish.  There is not a lot of oxygen to be had in a 4' deep pond if we expend all of the oxygen on a plant burn off we will be left with floating stinking fish, and maybe if we're lucky get our picture on the front page of the newspaper.  So, we are progressively spraying out the algae around the banks about 1/8 of the surface area at a time.
#13 Pond.  It looks great!  This pond is 13 feet deep and has good deep banks the water is clear you can see strait to the bottom on a sunny day from on top of the rock wall.  I am not recommending that you go out on the rock wall, we frown upon that. 
#18 Pond.  This pond has been up and down all year.  right now it is down 3.5'.  The reason that it is so low is that our water line has been interrupted temporarily.  As you probably know we receive effluent water from General Mills across the river and have been for the last 4 years.  This year General Mills had a construction project that sat right on top of the pipeline that feeds #18 pond on their side of the river.  The pipeline was not built with the idea of supporting a structure in mind when it was originally built.  They had to dig up the pipeline.  Stabilize the ground with rock.  Install a new pipeline and finish off the grade with stable material.  This project was estimated to take 3-4 weeks.  With the conditions becoming extremely dry I estimate that the timeline will be closer to 3 weeks than 4.  This project was started somewhere around the 20th of August.  So, we are about two weeks into the project.  I know that the pond looks low right now, but I have seen it much lower before.  We are not at a critical level yet.  But if we do reach that point I'm sure that out partners at General Mills will find a way to temporarily relieve the issue if needed.
That's my over-worded answer to an simple five word question.

Pond Management

We have made great strides in cleaning up our water features on the course in the last year or two.  Last year our ponds and retention areas were the best that I have ever seen them look.  This year we have only 1 pond that has been giving us a headache, #12.  I was very optimistic that our management strategies from last year would carry over into this year, but that was not the case.  The algae blooms started coming out in late June because the temperatures have been so (I want to say mild but the correct terminology would be average) average.  In a hotter year i.e. 2012 the blooms would have started in April or May.  

Last year we used Red belly Tilapia as out control method for Algae on #11, 12, 13 and 18.  It worked great so we are doing the same this season, only on #12.  Here is a picture of what they look like.

 

 We purchased 30 lbs of fish for the pond.  They were delivered in a mobile aquarium.  It was essentially a very large ice chest with a hose running from the cooler to an oxygen tank similar to a helium tank that you might see at a party supply store.  Seen below.

Adding the fish to the pond is a very manual operation.  Scoop them out with a net, load them in a laundry bucket and dump them in the pond.  Seen below.

This pond is actually more of a retention area.  It's only about 4 feet deep and has a rock floor under the sludge on the bottom.  (We found this out when we were installing Wood Duck houses in the area.  It's hard to drive a post into rock!)  The pond being large and shallow means that it is easier for light to penetrate to the floor of the pond where algae blooms with light sources.  When we sprayed chemicals in the past to control the algae it did kill the algae.  But, as it decomposed and sank it was converted to a food source(fertilizer for the blooming algae, so it actually magnified the problem.  

It seems like the fish are the best method of control that we have found yet, and it reduces our chemical usage. 

There is a downside to this method of control.  The fish die.  They are warm water fish.  when we get a massive cold rain in November they will start floating, and there will be a lot more than 30 lbs worth.  I think that the trade off of smelly fish for 1 week is worth the clean ponds for the summer.

Please remember that we do not want any fishing in the ponds on the golf course.  there is effluent water in every pond on the course and are not meant for swimming or fishing.

Water Weed Control

I hope that you have noticed throughout the year, as you were playing golf, the conditions of the ponds.  In years past the ponds have been horrendous.  This year they have been much better.  We have suffered through a couple different aquatic weeds: algae, primrose, coontail, duckweed.  The algae was the thick green mat that used to completely cover the surface of #'s 11, 12, and 3/4 of #18 ponds. 

Primrose is a vascular surface plant that grows from the shore line and produces a yellow flower.  You can seen in the picture to the right the red stem and broad leaf.

Coontail is a vascular subsurface weed.  You can see in the picture to the right the very tops of the plant protruding from the water.

Duckweed (pictured left) is a vascular floating weed, lime green in color and about the size of a sharpie point.  This picture is not from our course but is an accurate representation of the plant.

Our biggest problem has been the algae(pictured left).  We seem to have beaten the algae this year.  We have tried all kinds of things in the past to kill it with no real success.  We tried copper sulfates, pond dyes, herbicides (which I do not like spraying into ponds), fountains, sonic pulse emitters,and organic products.  None of them were successful.  Than last year I started reading up on Tilapia.  They are not built to live in our climate, but they are built to eat algae.  I was not sure on the legality of using these fish to clean up our ponds because in all likely hood they will die off in the cold weather.  So I contacted a regional company "Aqua Services"  and spoke with Troy Goldsby.  He has been using Tilapia for a few years now maintaining ponds to acceptable levels.  I pulled the trigger on it this spring and bought abunch of them, I think 30-40lbs of them. 

This is what our pond on #18 used to look like.

This is what our Pond on #18 Looked Like at peak season this season.

 

 

Aububon Projects

We have been working on some Audubon International related projects here lately. When the weather gets bad, and we have a chance to work inside, we have been making Wood Duck houses. As of today we have 5 of them out on the course. Two of them on #7 pond, two of them on #18 pond and one on #12 pond.

They were built at virtually no cost of materials. We got the plans from an online source. We got the lumber from my family farm, where we cut fallen trees for reuse in our saw mill. We went to a local metal recycling place and found some old 1.5" X 12' fence posts for $1.83 each. The mounting brackets cost $0.50 each at the local box store. I have some installation pictures below.

If you or someone you know would be interested in a project of this nature, please don't hesitate to give me a call. I'll be happy to help.

This is the finished product on #12 pond.

Here we have Neil and Spencer trying not to fall out of the boat while mounting this Wood Duck house.


This is the mounting pole going into the pond on #12. There is A LOT of rock in the bottom of this pond we found out. It took a while to find a place where they could drive the posts into the pond floor.

State of the Union Address

It's been a while since I posted any information on here this year. I apologize for the delay. We have had a really busy year on the golf course, the season is by no means over but it is on the decline. We have had many things going on with the course this season, both good and bad. We also have some changes that are still in progress.

The new bunkers that we built last winter were finally opened this spring. It is so nice to hit out of some actual sand when you get in a bunker. We have had nothing but compliments on them. We are getting ready to start working on some more of the problem bunkers on the course by either removing them or rebuilding them. I hope to redo 3-4 bunkers this winter and remove about 5 more. Hopefully one day we will finally finfsh the bunker project.

Irrigation has been a large headache this season. If you have ever spoken to me concerning our system, I probably said," It's our system and it is what it is". This is not a negative statement, we have a 25+ year old irrigation system, and that's what we have. It is not going to work like a brand new one, but it will get the job done for now. I spent the majority of the first part of the summer chasing heads around the course trying to get them to shut down or come on. I ended up replacing about 22 old sprinkler heads this season with new ones. We still have a few to go (850 heads on the course, replaced about 115 = about 15%).

The ponds on #11 and 12 have been an issue again. The fountains have been turned off. They are too small to operate in water that dirty. I wish they were the answer but they are not. There is a question to ask, why does #12 look so bad and #13 look so good? The answer is pond construction. The ponds are attached and #13 is filled with water from #12. #12 Pond is about 4 feet deep and #13 pond is at least 10 feet deep. In the deeper a pond it is less likely that sunlight will reach the bottom floor of the pond, and create breeding grounds for algae. I do not know if we will be able to fix the problem with #11 and 12 without starting over with new ponds.

We are in the middle of creating new natural areas. We have about 6 acres of new natural areas in the initial growth stage on #'s 8,9,10,11,12,13 and 18. The seedlings are just emerging from the seed, and we are getting ready to fertilize these areas. Most of the areas are irrigated. We are running programs with our irrigation system to make sure that these areas are watered thoroughly and have plenty of moisture for grow in. The bulk of these areas are on #11-13. When these areas have matured this area of the course will not play much differently, but will be more vsually appealing from the tee. Please keep all traffic out of these areas, and play them as ground under repair for the time being untill we establish a hazard ruling on these areas.

We have just finished aerifying the greens for the fall. I am really happy about the sand application that we made. I believe that it was the perfect amount. I played 9 holes the day after we finished, and truthfully thay are not bad to play on. Putts were not jumping around and breaks are minimal. Remember that aerified greens make your short game much better. We are already mowing the greens for the first time since punching them. I think we will get a great heal out of them.

I know this was a lot of information for one post, and there weren't a bunch of happy pictures to look at. I will do my best to get some pictures next time. And I will do my best to get more information back out to you the golfer.

Fishing

I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that there is NO FISHING in the ponds. I know there are a few homeowners that like to catch and release in the ponds on the course, unfortunately I cannot allow this anymore. Due to the reclaimed water source that we are using I cannot risk the legal repercussions of something happening. Now that we have fountains back in the ponds on # 12 and #13 we have to pull them out occasionally for maintenance. Last time I got an old hook in my hand that someone hung on the anchor rope for the fountain. On the positive side the fountains and the chemical applications that we are making in #11-13 ponds seem to be having good effect on the plant life that is targeted for removal. Unfortunately, I cannot make the same chemical applications in the pond on #18 due to the fact that it is the pond that we draw water for irrigation. Chemical label restrictions will not allow me to apply certain chemicals in this pond at certain times. I am constantly looking for a solution for the problem to the duckweed on #18. Just to solve the issue the lime green stuff floating on the surface is Duckweed, The plant like material that puts out a yellow flower is Primrose, pretty at times but a weed none the less.