Bill Ryan/The Gazette Liberty High School Ecology students Angela Mabe, Tanika Murphy and Matthew Beyer listen on Tuesday to project manager Scott Rouk during the dedication of the pond they helped to create at the school.

The cooperation between school and Chesapeake Realty and Development Inc. was lauded by all involved at a dedication ceremony on Tuesday, including students who lugged rocks, spread mulch, and put in many a plant last May.

"This is extremely unusual, what we have here," said Martin Covington, program engineer for the county bureau of resource management. Usually, symptoms of a problem are fixed, rather than the cause, he said -- in this case, the erosion of streams due to inadequate ponds.

While building out the second phase of the nearby Stone Manor development, Chesapeake President Jonathan C. Mayers said that they found terrible erosion going on in the local stream.

Covington, said the waterways were being cut back at a rate of 10 to 15 feet a year, the sediment was also eventually getting into Liberty Reservoir.

Now, water is forced through a small pipe, controlling the flow, Covington said. "The plants are sucking up all the oil, the grit, the grime, the trash, that is coming off the parking lots," said project manager Scott Rouk. They filter and break down all the chemicals, he said.

Mayers said he had the idea to include students in on the work. Physical work and the design for the retrofitting of the ponds was done by professionals, said Mayers, but finishing touches like the plantings and benches were brought in by students in a marathon one-day session.

On May 16, about 55 ecology students from Beth Snelling's and Al Donaldson's classes moved in 40 cubic yards of mulch and eight and a half tons of stone, Rouk said.

"It was one of the greatest days of my life," said Mayers. "You'd expect half to want to run to McDonald's," he said, but he found the students energized for the work, much of which was physical.

Senior Angela Mabe said that they filled holes with trees, and put down mulch. "There was a line of students passing rocks down the side of the hill. It was something to see," said Mayers.

Tamika Murphy, a senior, said she was not too excited about the prospect of helping build the pond, but "it was a really good experience. We made a big difference to what it looked like before." And everyone had fun doing it, she said.

Then, a few hours later, a huge rainstorm hit, putting the work to the test. Coming back after the weekend, students got to see the success of the pond, said Rouk.

And this way, Covington said, the school system did not have to pay to replace the dam near one of the ponds, a project that cost the developer somewhere around $60,000, Mayers said. In total, the ponds cost the developer between $200,000 and $250,000, said Mayers.

Mayers said they waited until fall to have to dedication due to the busy end-of-the-year school season. On Tuesday morning, Rouk unveiled a stone with the signatures of all the students who helped to transform the ponds.

Before, the ponds were weedy and hard to see, and in general "they weren't a very nice place to go," said Snelling.

But now, it is a microenvironment, said Rouk, and should be a nice place to watch geese land, said Rouk. "Fish will be in here soon," he said.

The pond has a deeper part in the middle, Covington said, which should allow wildlife like fish and frogs to survive the winter, living on to eat mosquito larvae that breeds in still water.

"What we are leaving here, literally, are living classrooms," said Mayers.

Snelling said that in the future, students could use the ponds to take soil samples and study the organisms in the water. She said she has even heard of English classes coming down to the ponds to use them for inspiration.

The process of helping build the pond was also an educational experience. "I think they really learned how an ecosystem works," said Snelling.

In classroom sessions prior to building the pond, Snelling said Rouk talked with the students about what plants they could put in. The students then looked them up, and Rouk said they voted on what to use.

Junior Brian Polk said that the experience, albeit tiring, would be handy in the future. "I want to major in science," he said, and eventually become a marine biologist.

At the ceremony, Principal Florence Oliver thanked the developer for helping to create a restful area, as well as a place where they can learn. "It's hard to capture kids' interest at a really high level," she said, adding that "this makes it come alive."

Another lesson, according to Rouk, is that developers are simply out to destroy the environment. "We're not bad people," said Rouk, something to get across to those who could one day be future clients.