A Fayetteville resident described a deteriorating, spring-fed detention pond in the McLaren Drive neighborhood and asked the Urban Forestry Advisory Board for help with erosion and long-term maintenance.

The resident said the pond — about 20 to 25 years old — fills from a perennial stream, “it’s spring fed,” and the outlet has eroded, allowing water to bypass detention controls and leave standing water near homes. “When it floods … it erodes, and it’s eroding bad,” the resident said. She asked whether the city would assist with repairing the outlet, restoring detention capacity and coordinating longer-term vegetation-based fixes.

The city’s landscape/detention-pond code was cited in the discussion: staff said the city’s detention/landscape rules in effect since about 02/2009 generally place long-term maintenance responsibility on property owners until a site is redeveloped. A staff member said changes to detention and landscape code around 2014 mean older basins often fall short of current standards.

The Illinois River Watershed Partnership (IRWP) joined the discussion. Sarah, an IRWP representative, described a newly launched stewardship-services program that offers restoration work at below-market cost and can support volunteer events. “We can share it with our direct email list of volunteers — it’s like over 300 people at this point,” she said, adding that IRWP can provide staff, equipment and event-listing support to increase turnout and provide education for long-term maintenance.

Board members and speakers discussed practical retrofit options short of heavy construction. One speaker described a Springdale detention-pond retrofit in which the outflow structure was raised by concret­ing a hole to retain water for several days, paired with native plantings to improve infiltration. “Retrofitting the output structure and coupling it with native plants … was a very simple fix,” the speaker said, and cited native vegetation and rain‑garden approaches as lower‑cost, longer‑term alternatives to rock or heavy machinery solutions.

Board members noted that many detention basins are privately owned — often by homeowners associations or private entities — and that operation-and-maintenance (O&M) responsibility typically rests with the original permit holder. One board member said that the O&M information should be recorded with the original permit (the transcript referenced a “SWED” permit filed at the state ADQ or with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for larger projects) so the responsible party can be located.

City staff said the planned stormwater fee will begin collection in August, with revenue expected to be available by September; staff described the fee as a mechanism to begin addressing a backlog of older retention/detention areas that predate more recent code changes.

Speakers identified three detention basins the board may target first for volunteer or retrofit work: Harmony Point, Saint James and Crystal Springs. Participants emphasized that many older ponds are over‑mowed, have spillways set too low for retention, or have invasive plant problems that require repeated treatments in a given year to be effective.

The meeting closed with board members agreeing to pursue a mix of city-led repairs (where structural fixes are needed) and partnership work with IRWP and volunteers for vegetation-based bank stabilization and invasive species control.

Ending: Board members directed staff and volunteers to continue evaluating sites and coordinating follow-up; no formal remediation vote or funding allocation was recorded during this meeting.