Managing stormwater is a big issue Greater Chicago commercial properties face each year.
That means dealing with stormwater drainage, ensuring your detention pond is regularly cared for and maintained.
In fact, detention pond maintenance is so important because it helps you avoid safety risks on your facility, including flooded parking lots or walkways, soggy turf, and bigger problems like erosion.
Especially for Greater Chicago industrial properties with lots of hard surfaces, stormwater can’t seep into the concrete so it must run off onto lower spots. For these properties, a solution like a detention pond is necessary to prevent flooding.
Try these detention pond maintenance tips to keep water flowing where you need it to on your commercial site.
4 Best Strategies for Detention Pond Maintenance in Greater Chicago
When detention ponds are neglected, they can back up and become clogged, which means they no longer do their job.
This can cause pools of water and even cause water to get into your building and cause damage.
That’s why you want to avoid any red flags and follow these detention pond maintenance tips to ensure your pond is always ready for Mother Nature’s worst storms.
1. Clear Blockages
After detention pond erosion occurs and you repair it, you also want to repair the surrounding vegetation. The moist environment surrounding detention ponds is ripe ground for invasive vegetation.
Grasses and weeds will just grow faster, and it can block inlets and outlets that must remain unobstructed to ensure proper water flow into basins. Vegetation traps debris, which also naturally tends to collect near these inflow/outflow areas.
Embrace regular weed and tall grass trimming and remove trash and debris as part of your detention pond maintenance.
2. Stop Critter Damage
Animals like groundhogs can burrow into the ground and disrupt detention pond inlets and outlets along embankments.
In burrowing and building dams, critters can damage areas of the detention pond, causing erosion and sediment runoff. Holes these critters make can also compromise the integrity of embankments.
As part of detention pond maintenance, fix any animal damage, fill in holes critters have made with rock and topdress them with soil and reseed the area.
3. Prevent Erosion With Shoreline Stabilization
A detention pond embankment may naturally erode over time because of the constant flow of water onto it. These ponds, after all, are designed to catch water that flows into it from the surface.
Waterflow will take a toll on the ground over time. This can result in erosion, which is when soil and sediment can wash into the pond and compromise its integrity. 
By using a riprap method as part of detention pond maintenance requirements you can stop erosion and extend your pond’s life. With riprap, you install a permanent layer of stone or boulders to stabilize your pond edges against soil surface erosion.
Maintaining native vegetation around shorelines is also important. Adding a buffer strip above the shoreline can also help with stabilization and prevent erosion.
4. Enlist a Professional For Detention Pond Maintenance
Detention ponds need maintenance regularly if you intend to keep your pond operating as expected and avoid encountering costly issues down the road.
That’s why hiring a professional with detention pond maintenance experience is important. They will know what areas to watch for and what maintenance is necessary to prevent erosion, clogs, or flooding and other potentially expensive problems. A professional will address sediment buildup, remove trash, trim turf and vegetation, and keep your detention pond operating smoothly.
KD Landscape Can Be Your Partner in Detention Pond Maintenance in Greater Chicago
A detention pond requires maintenance, such as mowing, trash and litter clean up, simple landscaping, sediment removal, and slope stabilization. These tasks can be ignored if there is no plan in place for regular care. And bringing a pond back up to standards can be a large, unexpected expense.
But the job can seem overwhelming. We completely understand.
KD Landscape would love to take this burden off of your plate. We have 18 years of experience managing detention ponds in Greater Chicago and know how to take care of them and keep them running well so you don’t have to worry about them.
If you have questions about detention pond maintenance, we’d love to help. After all, detention pond maintenance isn’t complicated; it just must be done regularly and correctly. The ultimate benefit of this maintenance is a low cost and attractive stormwater management feature that works for you and the local community.
Want to learn more about how KD Landscape can help you manage your detention pond on your Greater Chicago commercial property? Get started today with a free quote. We’ll review your options together so you can feel confident and make a great choice.
Image Source: Riprap
