Drive through West Kendall or Doral and you will pass more open water than most coastal towns have. The Hammocks, Kendale Lakes, Lakes of the Meadow, Country Walk, Doral Isles, and dozens of newer communities were all built around man-made lakes and retention ponds, because in South Florida, that is how development works: The law requires somewhere for stormwater to go, and engineers dig ponds to hold it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What the engineering never accounted for is that we then built playgrounds, bus stops, and backyards a few steps from the water, and put fences around almost none of it. These ponds look like landscaping. They are deep, steep-sided stormwater infrastructure, and they are one of the most persistent causes of child drowning in Miami-Dade County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have written before about the legal side of these cases in our guide to retention pond drowning liability<\/a>. This piece is about the neighborhoods themselves: why these specific communities carry this risk, what makes these ponds more dangerous than they look, and what residents and associations can do before a tragedy instead of after one. If your family has already been touched by one, my firm can help: Mausner Group Injury Lawyers, 305-344-4878<\/a>, and the consultation is free and confidential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n West Kendall and Doral sit on some of the lowest, flattest, wettest land ever converted to suburbs. When these communities went up, from the 1970s waves of development in Kendale Lakes and The Hammocks through the master-planned build-out of Doral, water management rules required each development to retain its own stormwater rather than flooding its neighbors. The result is engineered ponds in nearly every subdivision, marketed as lakefront living and priced accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The regulatory design criteria that govern these ponds address flood control and water quality. What they barely address is the people living around them. Fencing is generally not required. Depth signage is not required. And once a developer moves on, responsibility passes to homeowners associations and management companies that often do not know they own critical infrastructure, much less maintain it like they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A retention pond is not a natural lake, and the differences are exactly what kills:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Florida loses more children under five to drowning than any state, and while pools get the attention, the retention pond drownings that make the news each year in Miami-Dade follow this same script: A child slips away for minutes, and the water is right there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every pond in these neighborhoods has an owner, even when nobody acts like it. Depending on the community, that is the homeowners association, a community development district, the management company it hired, or in some cases, the original developer or the county. Ownership brings duties: maintaining the banks, addressing known hazards, and taking reasonable steps where children predictably gather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I explained in our foreseeability article<\/a>, the legal question is rarely whether water is dangerous. It is whether this owner, with this pond, feet from these homes and bus stops, should have done something: a fence along the townhome side, plantings that break the straight path from playground to water, signage, bank regrading, or simply acting on the near-misses residents had already reported. When associations skip those steps to protect the lake view, and a child dies, that choice is the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For parents, the advice is the same layered defense that works for pools: Know exactly where the water is relative to your home, teach children that ponds are not for play, enroll them in swim lessons early, and treat any wandering risk, especially for children with autism, as a reason to alarm doors and talk to your association about barriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For associations and property managers, the honest message is that the risk assessment has already been done for you, in courtrooms. Fencing the residential side of a pond costs a fraction of one case. So does a landscape architect's plan that puts distance and vegetation between play areas and water. Associations that study the issue and act protect children first, and themselves second. Associations that table the discussion for another budget year are building a record.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy These Neighborhoods Have So Much Water<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Por qu\u00e9 los estanques de retenci\u00f3n son m\u00e1s peligrosos de lo que parece<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Who Is Responsible for These Ponds<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What Residents and Associations Should Do Now<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n