The water in the pond remains stubbornly high, almost as high as it was two weeks ago on March 9, when I wrote my first post on this subject. The Hardy Pond Slow Drainage Exhibit (pdf), at left, shows the small-scale flooding that now can result from just a few days of rain, when the water is high, and the reserve capacity of the pond’s watershed is near its limit. The bigger photos were all taken on December 15, 2010.
Chester Brook, the discharge channel for Hardy Pond, is now so impeded by sediment and bank erosion that it poses a clear and present danger. A prolonged, heavy rain could have devastating consequences, causing property loss on the scale of the great floods of last year, or worse. Yet there is no sense of urgency among city officials to address this major public safety issue.
At right, Hardy Pond Water Levels as Observed on Heron Rock (pdf), shows varying levels of the pond as seen against “Heron Rock.” “Normal” was the base level, as I judged it, before the floods of March 2010. The pond would usually return to that “normal” level within two or three days of a high water event.