After the Flood: Retrofi tting Austin’s Urban Core to Accommodate Growth - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 79

Figure 4.5
A portion of the Central Park wet pond in the Waller Creek watershed.
Wet ponds apply the logic of nature to a technical strategy for water
quality control and refl ect the nascent discipline of ecological engineering
(as mentioned in chapter 1). The limitation of wet ponds is their require-
ment for large land areas and high costs for construction and maintenance.
Design and construction of the Central Park wet pond totaled $584,000
and annual maintenance costs the municipality $35,000, although this
refl ects a special contract with the property owner. Several dozen wet
ponds are now online in the municipality's jurisdiction but siting addi-
tional ponds is increasingly diffi cult, due to the large space requirements.
A Watershed Department staff member notes, “It's a real challenge to fi nd
a site where we can shoehorn in a control and have a big enough drainage
area to have it make sense from a cost-benefi t perspective.” 46
One of the most intriguing aspects of the wet pond approach is its abil-
ity to blur the boundaries between technical, natural, and social systems.
Rather than being a fenced-off or underground structure, the wet pond is
a highly visible and aesthetically pleasing stormwater treatment facility.
It rejects the conventional logic of separating urban residents from storm-
water fl ows; although it continues to be a technomanagerial approach to
urban runoff, it begins to recognize urban water fl ows as an opportunity
for place making. However, this idea of place making and expanding