Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

8 July 2010:

13 May 2010:

Well, it looks like the lily pond on Trenholm Road just up from the Arcadia Lakes town hall is gone.

This pond has been a pleasant sight from Trenholm for years, with its almost total cover of lily pads and an old rustic dock on the far side. In the last year or so, it has also been the source of some controversy. It seems a developer has bought the property and wants to build apartments on it. That will require a catchment basin, so he planned to dredge the existing pond to the necessary depth. Since lily pads need shallow water, that would have put paid to them. When word of the plan got out, he apparently was sued by a number of local residents to stop the dredging.

Personally, I'm of two minds about that. I hate to see the pond go, but I have some sympathy for a guy who thought he had jumped through all the hoops and then gets hit with unexpected legal trouble.

However, the really strange thing is that, at least according to The State, in the actual event, nobody seems to know why the water levels in the pond fell. Now, that report is from 15 May (just after I took my first pictures of the pond), so there may have been a determination since then, but that just strikes me as very odd.

The first day I was there, 13 May 2010, there was a guy in a john boat fooling with the concrete "stopper' for the pond. Given what I had read about the controversy, I just assumed he was there to "pull the plug", but perhaps he was simply trying to figure out what was going on. At any rate, on that day, I could see that the water levels were down from the norm by looking around the edges of the pond, and it just got worse every time I went back after that.

By 27 May, the water levels were low enough that you could walk to the "stopper", and on my final (so far) visit on 8 July, most of the pond was dry (except for a small watercourse leading to the stopper) and almost all of the lily pads were dead. At some point, the dock seems to have been partially torn down as well. The back area (where presumably the spring or stream enters the pond) is still very green, and I saw a heron walking around back there, but the front is totally gone.

13 May 2010:

14 May 2010:

21 May 2010:

27 May 2010:

8 July 2010:

UPDATE 8 Sept 2010 -- work has started. The whole pond is behind a plywood wall now, and a steam-shovel is ready to start digging:

UPDATE 18 Sep 2010:

The fence has now been painted, and there is a sign optimistically tagging the project "Roper Pond Restoration":

(I have also changed the post title to "Roper Pond" while leaving "Lily pond" in parens).

(23 January 2011):

UPDATE 17 May 2011 -- Actually the pond isn't looking too bad. Very murky water and no lily pads, but it could be worse:

UPDATE 6 June 2011: Added 28 July 2010 Photoset.

UPDATE 28 June 2011: Added 5 September 2010 Photoset.

UPDATE 6 July 2011 -- Apparently the "restoration" is finished:

UPDATE 11 July 2011: Added the 6 November 2010 photoset.

UPDATE 2 November 2011 -- These pictures were taken 28 August 2011. Land is being cleared and infrastructure installed. Note that they really have restored the pond to some extent as lilypads are again present:

UPDATE 3 November 2011: Addded full 28 August 2011 photoset.

UPDATE 5 November 2011 -- These pictures were taken on 23 October 2011. Construction is well underway. Also, a street number for the whole thing, 6837, has been added to the fence, so I'm putting it in the post title

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- Construction continues on Thanksgiving, 24 November 2011 (well, actually they took that day off, but you know what I mean):

UPDATE 21 March 2012 -- Well, construction continues, but the first wave of condos is now ready for occupation:

UPDATE 12 May 2012 -- Well the first phase of the condos (now christened Arcadia's Edge) is now open, and I guess my reaction is "It could have been worse". While I'd certainly still prefer the wooded lot and original pond configuration be there, at least there is some pond, with some lilies and some trees left:

UPDATE 29 May 2012: Add full 23 October 2011 photoset.

UPDATE 7 September 2012: Add pix from 23 January 2011

Photosets:

Photoset 28 July 2010

Photoset 5 September 2010

Photoset 6 November 2010

Photoset 28 August 2011

Photoset 23 October 2011

Photoset 10 May 2012