IRMO, S.C. — If you frequent Irmo Drive, you would probably recognize the small pond near Greenbriar Drive that people like to fish in.
After Friday night's storms, that pond is looking a little bit different.
"It's just been a staple," says Irmo Fire District Chief Mike Sonefeld. "Anytime you go down Irmo Drive, there's 'the pond on the right' that everybody refers to. It's just kind of sad to see it this way."
By "this way," he means almost completely drained. Chief Sonefeld passes this pond every day on his way to work. And after the unprecedented flooding the Midlands received in 2015, he pays special attention during storms.
"We kind of make it a norm now since 2015. We check all our pond dams, all our pond streams to try and get ahead of it if we see something happening," Chief Sonefeld says. "And so I was watching this one all day. I didn't think much of it. Then, at about four o'clock, I noticed some spots were going over the top of the dam. And I guess overnight the spillway gave way, and it emptied the whole thing."
"I live right down the street, not a half a mile from here," Joe Ouzts told Street Squad. "Normally, you see people from the public area around here come fishing about every other day. And it was just kind of sad to see that. I understood that the dam had busted."
"Any little spot of land that's either green or has water, I think its gotta be a loss somehow," Sonefeld says. "I don't know how to measure it, but I know visually, we'll miss it."
Street Squad reached out to the Department of Health and Enviornmental Control who said:
"The site was visited by the Department Dec. 16 after another Department staff member who was in the area on an unrelated issue noticed the empty pond. The breached dam wasn't reported to DHEC, so the date and time of dam failure aren't known. There was no apparent threat posed to downstream habitable structures.
This is an unregulated dam because it doesn't meet regulatory criteria (25 feet or greater in height from top to bottom of the structure or impounds 50 acre-feet or more of water at maximum pool). Therefore, the Department doesn't have authority in response to its breach. Staff notified S.C. DOT of the dam failure since it appeared Irmo Drive was over-topped."
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