Scout honors a pond and a healthy cause
By C.T. BOWEN, Editor of Editorials
Published January 27, 2008
It is a pond with no identity. Actually, it is a nameless stormwater retention area on the east side of Little Road near Heritage Lake Boulevard and St. Lawrence Drive.
"Pond" conjures up visions of fishing holes and perhaps a place to watch waterfowl. This one, not so much. Not yet anyway.
And, retention areas built to hold rainfall generally don't come with a formal name. That is about to change. This one is being adopted and, as with any new member of the family, a christening is part of the process.
Perhaps Osceola Pond, said Raynor Chamberlain, the 17-year-old Odessa resident who adopted the pond as his Eagle Scout community service project. Osceola for the Seminoles and for the Osceola turkey, he said.
Chamberlain is the son of Joanne Chamberlain, an accountant for Pasco County Utilities. A co-worker suggested the adopt-a-pond program to her as the family searched for suitable community-service work.
"Everybody does the same thing - playgrounds. I am sort of sick of that idea," said Raynor Chamberlain, a senior at Sickles High School in Hillsborough County.
He likes fishing, kayaking and the water lilies that are on the ponds on the family's 2.5 acres. He raises pigs, rabbits and goats. A member of the FFA, he has shown his livestock at the Florida State Fair. He has ambitions to study environmental science or marine biology when he enters college. The work on the pond became a natural extension of his own interests.
The adopt-a-pond advocates are pretty happy, too. The efforts by Chamberlain and a dozen or so Scouts from Troop 48 of Tarpon Springs is the first expansion of the 4-year-old program outside Central Pasco.
"I'm psyched," said Jane Brandt of Scenic Pasco, who said County Administrator John Gallagher had been encouraging the group to find a suitable site on the west side of the county.
Chamberlain's work will turn the nondescript drainage pond into a demonstration project to show west Pasco residents what a healthy body of water with natural vegetation looks like.
Chamberlain and his father also plan to build a kiosk to become a permanent information marker at the site. The high visibility, on the east side of heavily traveled Little Road, is a plus.
Previously, volunteers turned a retention area southeast of the U.S. 41 intersection with State Road 54 into the county's first demonstration project. It became known as Denim Pond. Neighborhood residents in Lutz also adopted a pond on the side of Leonard Road. It already had been called Lazy Duck Pond, after the permanent duck decoys there.
After months of planning, the actual work in west Pasco was scheduled to begin Saturday morning. Chamberlain and his fellow Scouts planned to hang information cards on 100 doorknobs in the Heritage Lake Estates subdivision.
"Be part of the solution to stormwater pollution," it reads with a rendering of a fish looking at a freshly mowed lawn. "Your home looks great, but what about mine?" The message is intended to show homeowners the dangers that lawn fertilizers pose to the environment.
In a few weeks, the Scouts will return to remove torpedo grass, an exotic weed from Australia. After that comes planting native vegetation, perhaps pickerelweed, cordgrass and bald cypress on the bank.
The timing is opportune, if coincidental. The door hangers were slated to be distributed the first weekend after actual rainfall in the area and Florida's designated Arbor Day. The effort also came less than 24 hours after Tampa Bay Water cut the ribbon and celebrated its functioning $158-million desalination plant in southern Hillsborough County - certainly the most expensive and difficult capital project intended to benefit the Pasco County environment.
Nothing that elaborate for our potential Eagle Scout. Chamberlain hopes to bring his environmental project in for less than $600.