Campbell Perc Ponds All Dried Up, But Just Temporarily

Things are a little quiet at Campbell's . The are gone, at least temporarily, along with the .

The Santa Clara Valley Water District has drained the ponds off of and the ponds at Sunnyoaks and Budd Avenues near Waldo Road in order to remove the excess sediment that has accumulated in each.

"We are leaving water in some of the ponds so that turtles and other wildlife will still have a nearby pond," Marty Grimes, water district program administrator, wrote in an email. "A biologist has been inspecting the sites to make sure we don’t impact any native wildlife."

Sediment is picked up in creeks or canals as the water moves, then drops out when the water reaches the large ponds, Grimes said.

"This sediment can clog the pond, reducing the amount of water it can recharge into the groundwater aquifer," he said in an email.

The ponds are scheduled to be cleaned of this sediment every two or three years.

The work kicked off on Monday and will go through Sept. 2. The district expects to remove about 5,700 cubic yards of sediment, enough to fill 713 dump trucks, Grimes said.

The system of groundwater "recharge" ponds are an essential part of the local water supply infrastructure, he said. In Santa Clara County, nearly half of all water used comes from groundwater.

"The county's groundwater basins have vast storage capacity, estimated to be three times the capacity of all the district's 10 surface reservoirs combined," Grimes said.

According to Grimes, the district’s recharge programs use more than 90 miles of local creeks and more than 300 acres of ponds to replenish groundwater. The groundwater subbasins filter and transmit more than 150 million gallons per day of water, more than the water district’s largest water treatment plant.