After and Before...

This is a story of a pond reborn.  This is Scudder's Pond not far from our house, and over the years it has become silted up, because of some strange drainage design.  The water runoff from one of the big streets that runs down toward the water, empties into this pond!  That's stupid!  The rainwater that runs down the hill to the pond, washes dripped oil and gasoline residue and sand into this pond where a lot of wildlife lives.  So they have spent a couple of million dollars to dredge the pond, and to remove all the Phragmites surrounding it.  I didn't realize that Phragmities are an invasive plant, but apparently they are not natural in this place.  So all the vegetation will be replaced with native plants, and they are adding a "swirl separator" to take out the sand - but not the residues from the street.  Go figure.  I took the "after" picture with a normal camera, and it is taken from the same place where I took the black & white "before" picture with an infrared camera a year or so ago.  The area of the pond is almost twice the size as it was before the dredging.