The Pond Part 3

The Pond Part 3: So there we are with a pond devoid of water and fish. Just a big hole then? Well, no. What we had was a big hole with about two feet of thick, rich silt at the bottom. Well, we could have taken the decision just to forget it and refill the pond, but we’re in the business of making things, and places, better whenever we can. This was an opportunity not to be missed!

The silt was all good organic stuff built up over a century or so. Just the stuff to enrich our adjacent field, or so we thought. Actually, one of our neighbours thought so too and asked if he could have a few barrow loads for his asparagus beds. No problem – after all we had tons of the stuff.

If we cleaned out the worst of the silt, there would be more water and the conditions would be better for the wildlife once we restocked. No argument. We did a deal with one of our contractor contacts and soon we were dredging the pond and spreading the material on our field.

Until we had a call from the Environment Agency who had been ‘advised’ that we were doing something we shouldn’t be. Not only should we not have dredged the pond, the material would have to go back in and we might be liable to prosecution and a fine.

It took several phone calls, a meeting on site and a flurry of e-mails to convince the Environment Agency that we were just trying to improve our environment and not embarking on an illicit silt smuggling operation. We carefully scraped up all the silt and redeposited it in the pond. But still the threat of prosecution remained…