When the plat of Maries Vineyard was being designed, the city of Olympia required that a stormwater drainage plan including ponds be a part of the plat.

The city requires that we maintain the ponds to a very stringent standard. A report must be filed about their status yearly. At one point a professional company was hired to do the reports at a cost of several hundred dollars. We now do the reports “in house” for no cost to our homeowners.

Due to the high-water table in this location and large volume of storage required, five ponds were designed with shallow depth and very large land areas. The ponds encompass 2.71 acres or 118,000 square feet. As part of the design, a weir (a sloped concrete structure that links two ponds) was built between ponds #4 and #5. At one point, moles had tunneled under a large section of the weir area, compromising it and creating a nightmare for restoration. The eventual water erosion due to the moles resulted in totally undermining the weir such that one could physically crawl under parts of the weir.

For restoration, a trench was dug along the upper boundary of the weir adjoining pond 5. The trench was filled with crushed rock and a clay type impervious material called bentonite. A special expensive geo-tech material was laid down from the top face of the weir and down into the bottom of the trench (about 4 feet) to minimize seepage. An exotic glue from 3M ($50 a quart) was necessary to adhere the cloth to the concrete weir face.

Next, foam was injected by a professional company under the weir to fill all the voids in a process similar to SlabJack. The longitudinal sides of the concrete weir were infilled with black crushed rock. To create a barrier for the moles, 18” tall galvanized narrow weave fencing was trenched and backfilled into the sloped dirt face of the weir embankment that was just outside the concrete area. Bentonite was installed with the fencing. Two rows of the underground “fencing” were installed to keep the destruction of the moles to a minimum. Previously trapping the moles proved to be ineffective and was also very expensive. The underground fencing has so far proven to be quite effective in restricting mole activity. The cost for all the above was about $4,000.

Then came the problem of trees that had grown into several of the ponds. The tree roots destroy the special fabric liners (which are very expensive) in the “wet” ponds #3 and #5. Also, the massive drop of leaves that occur each year had to be removed regularly as well as numerous branches. Over several years we have removed most of the problem trees. The last set of trees are scheduled to be removed from pond #2 in 2026 and 2027. The removal was broken into segments due to the high cost of the work and the necessity to keep the yearly assessment as reasonable as possible.

As part of the pond maintenance, three of the ponds (of which two are very large) must be mowed at least three times a year. Our landscaping contractor provides this service for the larger ponds #2 & #4.

Ponds 3,4, and 5 overflow into pond 2. The large #2 pond has overflow capability by feeding out to the city’s Woodland Creek drainage area through a special deep concrete vaulted control structure. The HOA owns this as well and must maintain it.

Pond maintenance repairs including tree removals over the last few years have averaged over $10,000 per year. Hopefully after 2027, this should drop to less than $4000 annually.

A special use agreement with the Olympia Parks Department negotiated in 2023 allows us access to pond #4 through the park. This permits larger equipment like pickups and large mowers to access the pond. A bigger lockable gate was also installed by MVHOA to facilitate ease of access.

You can see the pond locations on the plat map, which is available on our website. They are identified as “stormwater tracts” #A,H, and parts of #D, .Below are pictures of each of the ponds.