Duke Pond to Undergo Essential Maintenance

Water level of the pond will be lowered beginning in early November

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Duke Pond

鈥淲hen you collect so much stormwater from campus, you inevitably get a whole bunch of sediment and debris with it,鈥 said 老牛影视 Landscape Architect Mark Hough, who helped design the pond situated on a 12-acre site near Circuit Drive and Towerview Road. 鈥淲e knew going into it that this would be part of the process.鈥

The area closes to Circuit Drive, called the forebay, will be cleared of sediment over the next several weeks. Photo courtesy of Duke Marketing & Communications.

Since the pond opened, the area closest to Circuit Drive 鈥 designed to be a sediment-catching feature called a 鈥渇orebay鈥 鈥 has accumulated roughly 1,300 cubic yards of sludge that has raised the level of pond floor several feet.

鈥淭he function of the forebay is to capture that sedimentation before it gets into the main pond,鈥 said Duke Facilities Management Civil Engineer Ryan Lavinder. 鈥淏y design, it needs to be drained.鈥

The draining of the pond will begin when valves are opened in a 14-foot-tall concrete structure called a 鈥渞iser鈥 that juts up from the bottom of the pond.

Once much of the pond is drained, workers will remove the sediment from the forebay, a process that could take roughly a month. The forebay will be fenced off during the work. After the forebay is cleared, which is expected to be around the start of 2025, the valves in the riser will be closed and the water will return to the pond. The process of refilling the pond will be done by natural rainfall.

While the sediment removal project is unfolding, additional work around the pond will be completed, such as repaving the walking trail and adding approximately 25,000 aquatic plants 鈥 such as spikerush, pickerelweed and yellow pond lilies 鈥 to the shoreline.

Opened in 2015, the pond has won multiple awards for its design and function. It鈥檚 been a success as a water reclamation tool by saving Duke around 100 million gallons of water per year by supplying water for the cooling towers of Duke鈥檚 nearby Chilled Water Plant No. 2. And it鈥檚 become a popular walking spot on campus.

鈥淲hen you go into something like this, it鈥檚 the dynamism and the ephemerality that make it exciting,鈥 Hough said about the pond. 鈥淵ou build it and nature is going to do what nature does. In a lot of ways you just have to sit back and watch it and then adjust as you can with anything that鈥檚 unwanted.鈥

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