People who walk the cart path or live near Rockspray Pond in Peachtree City may have noticed some trees missing on the pond's dam.

Peachtree City officials urge everyone not to worry. The Recreation and Public Works departments have been busy in the area, and have removed the trees to protect the structural integrity of the dam, according to leisure services director Randy Gaddo.

“This past summer we had the county extension agent and a pond expert from the University of Georgia come here to look at all of our ponds and suggest ways of improving them as recreational resources,” said Gaddo. “When they saw the dam at Rockspray, they nearly had heart failure. They told us we had to get those trees off the dam as soon as possible.”

Gaddo went on to explain that as the trees get larger, their root systems go deeper and spread out, breaking up the soil as they do. The trees on the Rockspray dam were between six and eight years of age, and still growing.

“If we ever get any serious flooding, and one of those trees was uprooted, it would take a lot of dirt with it,” said Gaddo. “The force of the water would then begin to erode surrounding soil. If the flooding was serious enough, the dam could be compromised.”

Peachtree City Development Corporation, who constructed the pond, built the dam in the early 1980s. After stocking the pond, they began using it and the log house at Rockspray to entertain VIPs.

Clearing the trees was not something the city really wanted to do, according to Gaddo.

“We prefer not to take trees down whenever possible,” he said. “But this represented a potentially dangerous issue, and we had no other option.”

Gaddo said that park maintenance crews would be cleaning out spillways of all ponds and clearing brush on other dams as required.

In addition to dam maintenance, the county and state experts suggested using sterile grass carp to control certain types of weed that have proliferated in some ponds, particularly Rockspray and Three Ponds (also known as Luther Glass Park).

According to county agent Sheldon Hammond, Peachtree City was one of the first in the state to use these fish 12 to 15 years ago as a natural means to control the underwater weeds, which is their only source of food.

“The fish eat several times their own body weight daily,” said Hammond. “It normally takes a full season for a noticeable change in ponds that have weed proliferation.”

Grass carp were introduced to Three Ponds 12 to 15 years ago, and for many years the ponds did well. However, the carp's life span is 10 to 15 years, and after eight or so years it begins to slow down its eating patterns. So, the ponds must be restocked.

A carp also grows at a prolific rate. Ten-inch fish stocked in the spring can grow to 25 inches and between 7 and 10 pounds by the end of the first year.

It is against city ordinances to fish for grass carp in the city.

“You would have to get lucky to catch one anyway,” said Gaddo. “They don't tend to go after bait, unless it happens to have some grass attached to it.”

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