Dog Poop, Storm Drains, and Lake Conroe

If you live on or near Lake Conroe, you have probably seen the little medallions on storm drain inlets that say the drain flows to the lake. That is not a slogan. Water that goes into a storm drain around the lake goes into Lake Conroe without being filtered or treated. It is worth thinking about what is on the lawn the next time it rains.

What is in dog waste

A single gram of dog waste contains on the order of 23 million fecal coliform bacteria, the same family of bacteria that includes E. coli. It also carries the nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, that feed algae, and the parasite eggs that come with a carnivore’s digestion. None of that is dangerous sitting on a lawn for a day. All of it is a problem once it moves.

How it moves

A lakefront lot drains one way: toward the bulkhead. A yard a few streets back drains to the curb, into the storm inlet, and into the lake. Either way, a Montgomery County thunderstorm is enough to lift bacteria and nutrients off a lawn and carry them to the water within the hour. The San Jacinto River Authority samples Lake Conroe every month for E. coli, nitrate, phosphorus, and the rest, and the reason it reminds residents about pet waste specifically is that it is one of the sources a homeowner can actually control.

Multiply one dog’s yard by the thousands of dogs living around the lake and it is a real input. It is also one of the few that does not need a permit, a contractor, or a public meeting to fix.

The fix is not complicated

Pick it up, and get it off the property. The waste that ends up in the lake is the waste that was still on the lawn when it rained. A weekly scoop keeps the amount on the ground small at any given moment. Hauling it off site, rather than leaving a bag in the trash can by the driveway, keeps it from becoming somebody else’s runoff on a windy trash day.

Two habits help on top of that. If you scoop yourself, scoop before a big rain when you can, not after. And check the strip along the bulkhead and under the dock walkway, because that is where dogs go and where a quick pass misses.

Weekend houses are the gap

The homes most likely to send waste to the lake are the ones nobody is at. A weekend place that gets scooped when the family arrives on Friday has a week of buildup on the lawn every time it rains during the week. That is why our most common lake plan is every-other-week or weekly service timed before your weekends, and why we haul the waste with us rather than leaving it in a can that will sit until the next trip up.

What we do about it

We scoop lake homes all the way around Lake Conroe, from Walden and April Sound to Seven Coves and Point Aquarius, and everything we pick up leaves the property in a lined bin on the truck. If you have a lake house or a lakefront yard, our Lake Conroe pooper scooper page has the details, and the first cleanup is free.