The pond is 18 inches deep and holds 28,000 gallons of water.
By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
The pond is 18 inches deep and holds 28,000 gallons of water.
By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
"They're pretty," he said. "And there's tremendous interest in small aquatic gardens for homeowners. It's therapeutic."
The water lilies in question will be planted during the next few weeks in our WatDat site, a big, kidney-shaped pond visible from H-1 just before it stops being elevated as it passes Pearl City. A wading pool? Bird bath? Marine sanctuary? Radio-control model-boat race-course?
Turns out the entire area, once a military storage site, has been turned over to the College of Tropical Agriculture as an outdoor laboratory. That's why the land has been cleared, temporary classrooms erected and landscaping begun. By fall, the site should be in full bloom.
The pond was built by TropAg volunteers, Sato said. A depression was bulldozed out of the soil, condomed with huge PVC liners, and the edges held down with concrete testing cores.
Excuse me?
"The Department of Transportation checks concrete on every building site, and their lab runs pressure tests on samples," Sato said. "They had a lot of them lying around."
There are about 1,700 of the cores anchoring the pond liner, each about the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread and weighing about 30 pounds. (Let's see, that's at least 51,000 pounds. That pond's not going anywhere.)
The entire pond is only about 18 inches deep, and holds about 28,000 gallons of water. Anything special about the water?
"Right out of the tap," Sato said.