Photo Credit: SOLitude Lake Management
When I first became a parks and rec director in a town of about 35,000 in Georgia, I had little experience caring for municipal ponds and lakes; however, as fate would have it, there were quite a few of them in or associated with the parks inventory.
So I had to become an on-the-job student of water-resource maintenance. It took me a year or two of seeing the different cycles that ponds and lakes go through, depending on weather, people, fish, fowl, animals, and other factors that impact water-resource quality. But after a while, I began to see that flora and fauna can be a friend or foe to lakes and ponds, and it was up to my staff and me to protect the water and surrounding areas against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
In this respect, Guy Goldsmith and I have much in common. He is the parks and rec director in North Liberty, Iowa. We’re both north-central American farm boys with knowledge of only simple country ponds and lakes when we first started in parks and rec. Neither of us thought much about maintaining ponds; we just enjoyed fishing and swimming in them (except for those frequented by cows).