Persistance pays off

When we were living in our townhouse in Owings Mills, we were right next to the storm water management pond. Now, this pond wouldn't have been bad at all... and it won't when it's finally fixed, but currently, it's a major disaster area. The thing hasn't been taken care of in over 9 months, at least, and there is so much overgrowth, and standing water, and the gate doesn't even meet the top of the ground! Technically my brother should really be the one calling the county about all this kind of stuff, but of course being the loving, crazy persistent sister that I am, I offered to handle it for him since in truth, I kind of like handling stuff like this. So after spending about 1.5 hours on the phone with the Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection Storm Water division, I find out that our builder in fact is not up to code with this pond, and has never even submitted the correct documents to the county, and because of this are actually very close to losing a lot of money because of it. So I get all the legal info. from the county so that I can call the builder and actually know what I'm talking about. Then I call the builder... evidently when you use the correct legal terminology, and even throw in the fact that yes a toddler could drown in just two inches of water and if a child did get hurt in that pond, it would be on their shoulders legally, it somehow manages to get the ball rolling. In a matter of less than 5 minutes I had a promise from the owner of Powers Homes himself that the fence and all the brush would be fixed in the next 2 weeks or less, and in the next 6 months every other problem would be fixed and the pond would be turned over for inspection to the county. At the end of the conversation the customer service rep who I don't ever remember speaking to before this, said to me... "hey, didn't you move out of that neighborhood?", as to which I responded "yes, but does that really matter in regards to the pond?" I'm still pondering how they know I don't live there anymore... maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've complained about 20 times over the course of 3 years about the pond. I must have stars next to my name in their computer or something... maybe they even threw a party when they found out we sold the house :) Who knows... I am very anxious though to see if this work is completed in 2 weeks.... I'll keep ya posted!!

This is what the pond looks like.... notice the overgrown brush, the gate that isn't even a gate, and I totally should have tried to find a snake to take a picture of too to round out the grossness of the scene.