Smart Ponds Help Some Florida Communities Thwart Flooding

BY LINDSEY RANAYHOSSAINI

The financial toll from flooding left in the wake of Hurricane Ian is estimated to range from $18 billion to $35 billion, with many communities struggling to rebuild.

But some communities near Port Tampa Bay and in Charlotte County were mostly unscathed by the flooding, protected in part by smart ponds, a new technology that has changed the way stormwater is managed. Smart ponds are remotely managed stormwater ponds with a valve system that can alter their water level based on real-time weather forecasting.

The automated control technology that powers smart ponds was developed by Boston-based company OptiRTC and introduced in Florida by National Stormwater Trust, Inc., headquartered in Tallahassee. A smart pond combines those automated controls with cloudbased software and weather data and can manage its water-level without human intervention needed.

“The system is running on autopilot all the time,” said National Stormwater Trust Co-Founder Jeff Littlejohn. “And the system allows us to configure every pond with site-specific information, so every pond is configured in a unique way.”

Founded seven years ago, National Stormwater Trust has retrofitted traditional stormwater ponds throughout Florida in collaboration with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and other businesses, local governments and residential communities. After installing the technology, the company remotely manages the ponds through an online dashboard.

The smart pond at Babcock Ranch

Photo courtesy of National Stormwater Trust

Flood Prevention In The Face Of A Hurricane

The true test of the ponds’ capabilities came as Hurricane Ian pummeled parts of Florida with record rainfall in September 2022.

“It’s hard for us to talk about because [Hurricane Ian] was a tough situation for a lot of folks, but it was a great opportunity for us to show how well this technology works and how much of a difference it can make for communities,” Littlejohn said.

The company had installed its smart pond technology in an FDOT pond in Port Tampa Bay in June 2022, just in time for hurricane season. The Port Tampa Bay pond utilized National Weather Service data to determine that it did not have the capacity to capture the rainfall as Hurricane Ian approached. The pond then drained almost four feet of clean, filtered water into the bay and captured nearly 175,000 cubic feet of polluted stormwater when the hurricane made landfall.

Jeff Littlejohn, the co-founder of National Stormwater Trust, discusses smart pond technology onsite.

Photo courtesy of National Stormwater Trust

“For that community, which is an economically challenged community, they were able to prevent flooding and treat twice the amount of stormwater as they would have with a traditional pond,” said Patrick Blair, vice president of engineering for Port Tampa Bay.

In this community, the smart pond made the difference between flooding and not flooding. And for the environment, it meant that this large volume of untreated stormwater stayed out of Tampa Bay.

Smart ponds also prevented hurricanerelated flooding in Babcock Ranch, a residential community in hard-hit Charlotte County. At the time of the hurricane, Babcock Ranch had three ponds. In this case, the ponds were not fully automatic, so National Stormwater Trust alerted the community’s managers of the flood risk and encouraged them to monitor the ponds. Because the system worked efficiently, rising water stayed out of the community’s homes.

“The system connectivity and additional storage goes above and beyond the typical regulations and proved to be a difference maker in preventing flooding in the community,” said Amy Wicks, vice president at Kimley-Horn and Associates, the information system development engineer for Babcock Ranch. “In addition, the requirement of native landscaping proved to be helpful in the storm as there was much less debris.”

Littlejohn noted that flood prevention is not guaranteed for communities with smart ponds, but the ponds’ unique ability to drain clean water to increase storage capacity when the need arises does mitigate the risk of flooding.

“Each storm is different and each community is different, so this is very much a generic problem to try to solve,” Littlejohn said. “But in a lot of communities, every little bit of storage matters.”

Water Quality And Storage

When severe weather isn’t on the radar, smart ponds prove useful in storing and treating stormwater using the same filtration system of plants and naturally occurring bacteria as a traditional storm pond. The key difference, according to Littlejohn, is that a regular pond “is just a hole in the ground,” whereas a smart pond can be drained to create additional storage capacity.

The added storage capacity is a significant factor when developers must weigh the costs of purchasing additional land or using high-value property for the construction of traditional storm ponds. Prior to the advent of smart ponds, the only alternative for stormwater storage was underground vaults constructed from concrete.

Though the vaults save space, they become damaged over time and are costly to repair. In Port Tampa Bay, heavy port equipment takes a toll on the vaults and land is too valuable to construct additional storm ponds.

“We’re big fans of [the smart pond technology], both for converting our owned land to offsite stormwater and converting some of our existing ponds into smart ponds with the same technology,” Blair said.

A second smart pond is currently being added in Port Tampa Bay.

In normal weather conditions, the continuous cycle of filtering and discharging water from a smart pond ultimately equates to less polluted water.

“During regular rain events, what the ponds are doing is releasing regular stored water ahead of the event and then capturing rain water,” Littlejohn said. “That difference in when that stormwater is discharged corresponds to approximately a 50 percent improvement in water quality.”

For Littlejohn, whose 20-year engineering career included a three-and-a-half year stint with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, improving Florida’s water quality has been a long-held goal.

Photo courtesy of National Stormwater Trust

“During that time, I really learned more about the water quality challenges that our state has, and I was very interested in looking for opportunities to earn a living as an engineer but also solve or be part of the solution we need here in Florida,” Littlejohn said.

National Stormwater Trust is slated to install 26 more ponds in 2023.