Pond maintenance can mean the difference between a shallow pond filled with weeds and a luxurious water feature home to fish, ducks, and other aquatic wildlife.
Whether you have a backyard pond or are trying to maintain a commercial property, you’ll want to ask our local dredging company at McCullough Excavating about silt removal.
Continue reading to learn how is one of the best ways to keep your pond or lake healthy.
Prevents Flooding
Without lake or pond dredging, silt can build up over time. When this happens, bodies of water can become shallow and eventually dry out. If you notice your lake or pond is choked with aquatic plants, you’ll want to schedule muck removal as soon as possible. Too many plants not only reduce the size of your pond or lake, but they also make it more vulnerable to flooding.
Flooding is more likely in the spring when the snow melts and it rains more often. Your pond or lake is especially more likely to flood if you have allowed it to become shallow over time. The shallower the container, the more likely it is to overflow. Thankfully, pond or lake muck removal can keep a body of water healthy for years to come and prevent flooding.
Removes Blockages
If a body of water has been used for industry or recreation, you’ll need to consider dredging. It’s not uncommon for lakes with high boat traffic to need sand dredging so they don’t lose water depth over time. Otherwise, boats drag up enough silt and sand that eventually they won’t be able to pass without scraping the bottom. Lake dredging is often needed to make sure water continues to flow as if it had never known humans.
We recommend mechanical dredging (as opposed to hydraulic) if you need to remove heavy blockages. While hydraulic dredging works much like a vacuum cleaner would to suck up fine silt, it can’t remove heavy rocks or other objects on the bottom of your lake or pond. A lake with a rocky bottom would most likely need mechanical dredging, which uses heavy machinery.
Protects Food Web
All life needs water to live, which is why dredging is sometimes used to protect habitats. When lakes and ponds become shallow, animals move onto more reliable sources of water. Not only does this affect the food web, but it can also affect tourism. For some areas, the local wildlife is as much of a draw to tourists as the water itself.
When the resident animals find new homes, this can create opportunities for invasive species to get a stronger grip on the environment. Lake or pond silt removal is good for the environment because it prevents native species from moving elsewhere for water. Dredging also removes lake or pond algae that can eventually reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water and kill fish.
McCullough Excavating is a Bainbridge dredging company dedicated to helping restore waterways through sediment dredging and silt removal. If you are interested in our dredging services, give us a call at (765) 386-6514.