Retention ponds why do we need them? My sub-division has two. Can’t the water just get drained to the river?
In: Engineering
I’m a civil engineer and work in land development design and the ELI5 is basically grassed areas allow water to get back into the ground and hard surfaces do not.
When you take a piece of land that was all grass and replace it with roads and houses and other hard surfaces a lot less water end up back into the ground which means more water needs to go to the river. Because the river isn’t used to this extra water we need to keep it on site and slowly release it to avoid flooding downstream areas.
Being able to hold this water longer also allows us to remove some of the pollutants that it may have picked up on the streets and driveways on its way to the storage pond and prevent those bad things from entering into the river.
Basically we have to trick the river into not knowing there is a subdivision there so it thinks everything’s still all grassland or forest or whatever – we can’t give it more water then was there before construction and we can’t give it dirtier water than it got before construction or it will harm the wildlife.
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