A West Laurel man who said a broken Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission pipe flooded his front yard pond and killed thousands of fish said he has "reluctantly" accepted a settlement offer of $31,000 from the utility company.

Ronald Ace, who lives on Bond Mill Road in West Laurel, said a pipe burst upstream from his pond in August 2007 and went unfixed for 30 days, flooding his 17,000-square-foot pond with chlorinated water, and killing all the plant and animal life in the pond.

Despite complaining to WSSC about the leak, he said the company took weeks to fix it. In that time, the flood dumped 3,800 cubic yards of sediment into the pond.

Ace said an independent contractor told him the flood caused about $300,000 in damage to the pond, which Ace subsequently asked WSSC to repay.

However, after more than a year of wrangling with WSSC, Ace said he had to accept the $31,000 from the company.

"I only did it in desperation to get things going," he said. "They killed those fish and there's no getting around it, but I don't have the time and it would take years of time to defeat them."

user comments (1)

user nuggett88 says...

I have a friend who lives near Mr. Ace. What he doesn't explain in the article is the fact that during this time there was a severe drought and the water was comming from a relief valve that is designed to open when water pressure in the water main gets too high not a broken pipe. The relief opened and water ran in a small stream behind a few houses not visible to the public. Mr. Ace was very happy that fresh water was running into his pond during this drought until he discovered it was killing his fish. Then he called WSSC and the water was turned off immediatly. It may have ran for weeks as he claims, but as soon as he notified WSSC (the same day) the water was turned off. He wanted $300,000 of taxpayer dollars after he watched water run into his pond for 30 days and didn't bother to get around to calling anyone until he saw dead fish? Mr. Ace, did you wonder why a steady stream of water was running into you pond during a drought in the middle of August? Maybe you should just fill in the pond if you don't have the common sense to operate it. Just another greedy person trying to get free money for his own stupidity.

Posted 6:07 PM, 12.08.09 | Permalink