More on Park Ponds

Charlie Wakeem once again emailed me some information about ordinances concerning the design and payment of park ponds. Here is what he wrote:

"When there is conversion of detention/retention ponds to parks, they should be designed to have a 'more natural appearance' as 'wetlands and passive parks'.  The important sentences are highlighted with the key phrases underlined.  Converting ponds to park ponds is still the city's responsibility, and supposedly cannot be paid for by the 10% open space money from the Stormwater Utility by ordinance." 

Keep in mind that EPWU CEO John Balliew emailed me after a recent post on this subject and said this: 

"My comment about not spending any money on the park ponds was simply to convey that we have not been billed for any park pond projects as of today. I did fail to mention the one exception which is the Saipan/Ledo pond where I think we were billed."

Here is the rest of Charlie's message with highlighting:

OPEN SPACE MASER PLANCHAPTER 5 – OPEN SPACE MASER PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS18.  Citywide - Detention Ponds and Linear Park Corridors
Detention Ponds throughout El Paso offer enormous opportunities for open space. The prototype is Feather Lake in the Mission Valley area, which has become a renowned bird watching location, but which still functions as a viable detention basin. El Paso has more than 100 existing detention ponds totaling more than 1,000 acres, and in many cases these are the only open undeveloped areas in the neighborhood that surrounds them.As the city re-considers its drainage master plan, these areas should be adapted to serve multiple purposes. They can readily continue to serve as detention areas in times of extreme floods such as the events of August 2006, but at the same time can be converted into wetlands and passive parks with additional landscaping, trees, walking trails and shade pavilions. The practice of “walling off” these areas from the neighborhoods around them should be discontinued. Instead, the ponds should be refitted with gentler side slopes that do not exceed a 4:1 ratio (slope to rise). Pilot channels and lower areas at the bottom of ponds can contain periodic normal rainfall events and leave the remainder of the pond as usable area. Even if the bottom is not accessible, the perimeter access drive should be configured to be park-like in appearance and in use.
The updated drainage master plan should not be looked on as a way to further limit the use of drainage channels and detention ponds as open space assets. El Paso cannot afford to revert to techniques that have been abandoned in other cities in favor of more attractive uses. If some additional detention areas are required to permit the introduction of wetlands and passive parks into the existing detention areas, then the tradeoff in cost is still much more efficient and helpful in creating a better El Paso for the future.  CHAPTER 6 – IMPLEMENTATIONA-4. Making Drainage and Ponding an Integral Part of the Open Space Plan
Through changes to both zoning and subdivision regulations, require that drainage and pond features be designed to have a much more natural appearance. These features are required in every development. Why then not make them an integral part of the development, rather than an afterthought or features to be hidden away as unusable space while the remainder of the development has no other open areas? While this may require some additional land, the resultant benefits to the appearance of the city as a whole are far greater.