Best way to obtain new water/ponds

Water/ponds seems to be hard to find these days and getting permission seems even harder. We recently lost one of our ponds temporarily for the addition of a public park. The closest pond for me is about an hour away, so testing now is more difficult. What is the best way to look for new water and work with the city and the community to gain access to new ponds for testing and maybe a race?

Any help or thoughts would be great

Beau

We had to find a old gravel pit and get permission from the land owner and get organized. Happy hunting!

Google earth to locate water, then knocking on doors, or tax records & phone calls to locate owners if the land is vacant. Once I have located a possible site on google earth, I attempt to physically lay eyes on it WITHOUT trespassing. If the property is lived on, go to the front door FIRST!! If nobody is home, leave - DO NOT walk around to check it out. Come back later, nobody wants strangers wandering around their property when they're not home (-; If nobody lives on the land, maybe their name will be on a POSTED sign. Check with neighbors, they may know the owners. State/County/City/Municipal parks, check with the onsite office first. If they cannot grant permission, they can direct you to who can. Don't rule out ANY site, our club pond is a municipal water treatment facility about 20 miles from D.C., a Homeland Security protected site. My personal test ponds are in an apple orchard & a public campground. Cacapon State Park in W.VA. was as simple as walking into the ranger station & asking. They had a fishing/swimming/paddle boat lake with an upper resivoir to keep the main lake full, that resivoir is where I can run. Same situation as the campground, both pounds with no fishing or swimming or boating allowed. I would suggest that you start with just a few practicing wherever you get, just to "gently" expose any people to what we do. Odds are, they will come over to watch & talk. Stop, take the time with them, develop a relationship before you jump right into holding races. You may figure out that they won't want all that & just have a good test pond. Sometimes going in asking about going all out right away may turn some folks off, precluding even getting practice water. You may end up talking to an individual, a head park ranger, the city council or county commissioners. Worst any of them can do is say no, just gotta search, locate & ask. Knocking on doors seems to work best alone, city council would be a club presentation, IMHO. These approaches have worked well here around the nation's capitol, & these folks around here are as uptight as anyone anywhere!! LOL

Think of what THEY may want...

Alot of the farmers will let you just ask what you can do for them

One of the biggest things is to make it clear that you and/or your club is more than willing to follow any requirements spelled out. If the owner/administrator says no vehicles on the grass, for example, agree to it. It's a lot easier to carry everything or have a small cart to carry your stuff to the water than to find another location

Of all things, I had the local Parks and Recreation Dept. contact me asking if there was anything that they could do for us when I was trying to form a club here. One of their employees who oddly enough lives a block behind me was in the hobby shop and saw my fliers and the called me. They were looking to help save a park or sell it for housing development and wanted more activities there to make it more family-friendly as it had gone down the tubes with hookers and drug dealing going on there.

They asked plenty of questions like how many people would an event attract as they figured that every person attending would spend about $100.00 in the city. OK, that's their number, not mine.

I'd suggest starting at whatever place you call it in your city or county. Take a rule book along to show them our insurance as that's big to any place that you'd be looking at.

I did wind up using a park for the fun runs I used to host here with their blessing. If anyone had a problem with us they could take it to the head of the P & R Dept. as I also had a written OK plus a DNR regatta permit. Local police don't mess with the DNR as they've got a lot more power than them.