Emily UR - Policies and Prisoners, a hypothesis

This past Thursday, March 3rd, 2016, I took advantage of the opportunity to shadow a woman, Catherine Bowman, as she used water level data collected throughout the year to study and report the impact of irrigation on two wetlands in the Halifax Plantation. While interviewing one another, she learned of my IRP and suggested a possible cause for one stormwater management pond (SMP) being more polluted with nutrients than another. I had completely overlooked the fine detail of what she called a vegetation buffer. Basically, a vegetation buffer is a line of vegetation that surrounds the entire edge of a water body and acts as a sort of net for catching nutrient runoff before it gets to the water. In the Halifax Plantation, where one of my focus SMP is located, she told me that "each water body must maintain a vegetation buffer 1ft-2ft above the surface of the water". It's part of a policy that Halifax has taken upon themselves in an attempt to "catch" nutrient runoff from overwhelming the water and creating an algae bloom, which would be an eye sore on the people who live near the water body.
Now, in light of this new information I began to think about the other SMP located in Tuscawilla Park and how the city of Daytona Beach, which manages the landscaping here, probably hasn't implemented the same kind of policy. Suddenly I remembered that even if the regular city landscapers have taken a vegetation buffer into consideration, the state prisoners may not have. I can explain. Every now and then, maybe every 3rd or 4th landscaping of the park, state prisoners will be sent to do what the city workers do, with the exception of mowing the grass. Some of them have weed-whackers though which enable them to trim away any kind of vegetation buffer that surrounds the SMP. Cutting away the vegetation buffer would cause all the dying organic matter of said cut vegetation to fall into the water body and as a result, the next rainstorm would flush a greater amount of nutrients into the SMP, creating an algae bloom!
This is strictly a hypothesis formed from newly gathered information. The vegetation buffer is something I would have completely overlooked had Catherine not suggested it to me, so thank you Catherine!
UPDATE:

Halifax Plantation SMP being studied. Note the vegetation buffer
which surrounds ~40% of the water. The remaining 60% consists
of grass and bald cypress knees.

 

Tuscawilla Park SMP being studied. I would say that there is very little
signs of a vegetation buffer here. Only maybe 20-30% of vegetation surrounding
the water here is greater than 2in. in height and maybe 1ft from the surface
of the water.

Some tall grass in the vegetation buffer surrounding
the Tuscawilla Park SMP.