We have had only a trivial amount of rain since the most recent wave of heat broke, and none in the last few days. But this morning, somehow, there was water in Stamford Green Pond. Where had it come from? Had something sprung a leak upstream, up on the Common?
The snap above, from late yesterday afternoon is a bit inconclusive, even under zoom. The black stuff in the middle was just mud, but maybe there is a sheen of water - although I think I would have noticed at the time if there had of been any water.
But this morning, no doubt about it at all. Oddly, very few birds, when there had been quite a few moorhens, young and old, on the mud the day before.
Aside: an irrelevant puzzle has been the absence of dead fish. I had thought that there were fish in the pond, but perhaps the casualties get hoovered up pretty quickly.
A lady on the next bench did not know anything about it, but she did know that filling from the tap, as it were, could introduce an unhealthy amount of chlorine into the pond. We certainly get a whiff of chlorine from our taps from time to time - but not from the pond today.
There was also an extravagant display of flowers in a row of planters along the wall of the Cricketers adjacent, the first time that I had noticed them, although BH tells me that they have been there for a while. They must take a bit of watering in this heat, but if there is an automatic watering set-up which has leaked, I would not have thought that it would have leaked as much as this - even supposing that the water in the pond is only an inch or so deep.
While by this afternoon, a bright green algal bloom.
And while we are on leaks, the day before yesterday, Sunday, there was this fine head of grass in the middle of an otherwise parched verge not very far from where we leak. A recent leak or an active leak? It is in the right sort of place for a water meter.
I talked to Gemini about the matter, and his line is that the most likely explanation is an upstream leak in or around the houses on the Common side of the pond. A smell of chlorine would be a positive indicator, but one that dissipates pretty quickly. And instant algal blooms are a normal response to wetting a dried out pond - hopefully not Cyanobacteria, aka blue-green algae.
The pond did not appear on the Thames Water map of reported problems - quite a decent map, I thought - and so I have reported it too them. All quite sensible and efficient so far.
PS 1: Thames Water were on the phone within a few minutes of my report. Most impressive!
PS 2: Wednesday morning: I have now had a nil report from Thames Water. Nothing going on, nothing to report. Hmmm: my money is still on a leak to the south.
While BH points out that the name suggests that there was a ford at some point. Maybe immediately to the north of where the pond now is, centre in the snap above. With the water draining north, towards Longmead Road at that point. There is a large cover at the corner immediately to the west of the pond, I dare say covering a junction of some sort.
References
Reference 1: https://www.thameswater.co.uk/help/report-a-problem#/view-and-report-problems.
Group search keys: 20260823, 20260824, 20260825.
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