My Green Community: Norm Shea and Pond Water Quality

Association staff member Norm Shea, Director of Lakes Manage-ment, thinks that the community has only just started to work on purifying water in its ponds, rivers and creeks.

In the summer of 2006, the South Carolina Oyster Restoration and Enhancement (SCORE) project, a community-based volunteer effort with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, deployed 210 bags of oyster shell on the inter-tidal banks of Bass Creek (across from Willet Pond) on Kiawah Island. Twenty-five volunteers from the com-munity deployed the bags, which weighed more than three tons!

These bags of shells provide a hard surface to which juvenile oysters, called spat, will attach and create new oyster reefs. Oysters provide critical habitat for crabs, fish, shrimp, birds and a host of other animals. An adult oyster can filter 2.5 gallons of water an hour, thus improving the water quality in South Carolina’s estuaries. Oyster beds also act as natural breakwaters to protect adjacent shorelines from erosion.

In 2004, Norm was instrumental in constructing three reefs in commu-nity waterways-again with volunteer help-at nearby Bass Creek to establish oysters and to curb some of the erosion that was occurring in the area. To find out more about SCORE visit http://score.dnr.sc.gov

Norm uses other water purification techniques for the association’s 117 ponds. He controls aquatic plants including duckweed and monostroma algae, but he’s opposed to applying chemicals to remove them. As al-ternatives, he stocks fish, manipulates water salinity and waits for the annual influx of migratory ducks, who are voracious eaters.

As an added measure, Norm also established lakes-edge mowing guidelines. The association used to mow to the water’s edge. Now, mowing stops at least three feet from the bank. Vegetation along the banks-both in and out of the water-grows undisturbed. The elim-ination of wholesale mowing has reduced chemical runoff and in-creased the opportunities for juvenile wading birds to learn to fish.

Planting native grasses at the water’s edge, like Spartina grass, can rebuild eroded areas along pond edges.

For more information about specific management techniques, including erosion control methods using plants, go to http://www.kica.us/PDFs/LandAndLakesSOP.pdf

Norm is proud to be a part of a community where residents are willing to trade the manicured look for a more natural look. Working with na-ture has made Kiowa Island a better place-wildlife is abundant and residents are happy.

Meanwhile, the oysters are thriving on relatively new reef homes. Norm may be reached at Norm.Shea@kica.us