Trash in soakaway pond
 

About a year ago I complained to the powers that be about the unsightly trash building up in the soakaway pond next to our house. They said that clearing it up was the responsibility of the company (contracted by The Villages) that mowed the surrounding grass - in other words, go whistle.

Since there has been no attempt to clean it up, I scaled the fence today and filled a large bag with the trash. A lot of it is unwanted free monthly newspapers (Lady Lake News - a quality read, if you have no brain) in plastic bags, plus the spikes that hold the "Lawn Just Treated" signs beloved of Massey et al.

One of the downsides of living next to one, unfortunately, but good for you.

I’m making the assumption that a soakaway pond is your name for a retention pond?

Need a few more people like you around this place.
There are people that pick up trash without anybody noticing. Those, like yourself, are the neighbors we all want.

Thank you for doing that.

The trash goes down the culverts and in heavy rains it all washes out into the ponds.

Not sure who you called in the past to complain. You should call your local CDD and let them know about it. Remember, you are paying whoever is responsible for maintaining that area. If they are not doing their job, it should be noted. Jumping over a fence to get to that area….could be detrimental to your health and well being. But thanks again for trying to keep it neat.

Our Village has a pond cleanup committee. They meet every two weeks and tackle two or three of the 11 ponds that we have. It’s a great way to meet your neighbors, get some exercise and do something positive for your community. Might be worth setting up something similar in your Village.

No good deed goes unpunished. I will bet there is some reason why you can't do a good thing.

Just watch out for gators!

I think it's great that our communities come together to help keep them in nice condition, with trash picked up, and neighbors being neighborly. The neighborly part is what convinced me to agree to move here when hubby insisted that I accept it.

However - we DO pay taxes, and fees, and there are people who are paid to do these things. So while we are cleaning up, I do hope SOMEONE is calling the county/town/CDD to tell them that their crews need to be more vigilant in the locations where the extra help is needed.

Imagine paying a company to mow your lawn, and you decide to mow it before he can get there, because you think it's long enough and time to be trimmed. Imagine you do that every week, and you just keep paying him every week, and he is more than happy to take your money and give you nothing in return.

You can't imagine doing that, because - you wouldn't do that. You would at LEAST ask him to come a little more often so he can get to it before it gets high enough that you choose to do it yourself.

Good Job, pat on the back. Sometimes we just need to go ahead and do it.

Pond Trash
 

Yeah, The attached picture is what I clean out of our pond on a monthly bases. The landscaping crew never cleans up any mess. I believe that a lot of it is from people putting out thier trash early and the animals get into the trash bags and it ends up in the ponds.

An observation: we're on an executive GC with a pond, there is zero trash there, ever. Proving it can be cleaned up. The GC are under different management than the common areas.

Call District Property Management. They will get the appropriate Company to clean up the pond area. If they don’t do their job properly they get docked. The District Property Management needs to know so they can address the problem.

Actually, the golf course contractors don’t have anything to do with the ponds. There is a separate contractor known as “Solitude Lake Management” who is responsible for all the ponds in the Villages. This includes shoreline weed control, top water algae, submersed aquatics as well as trash removal from the ponds.

Danger
 

All good until someone gets bitten or killed by an alligator. Please be vigilant during your clean up activities

Wow! They need to fire them and find a new contractor because almost all of the ponds down south here have at least one of these issues, and nothing is ever done about it.