The Deerfield neighbourhood in Steinbach's east end will get a new water detention pond this summer along with another one kilometre of cycling and walking pathways. City council this week awarded the contract to Friesen Hauling and Excavating which had the lowest of seven bids. It will do the work for $588,000, well below the $765,000 the city had budgeted.

City councillor Jac Siemens says the detention pond will be an important piece of the city's water management system.

"As the water does come from the RMs to the east and to the south of us, that water flows right through Steinbach so we need to manage that in some form and that's what these detention ponds do."

Siemens add the the new cycling and walking pathways will connect to the existing pathways that run through Deerfield.

"It is about one kilometre and it will hook into the pathway that comes from Hespeler, that joins Deerfield. It'll hook into that and then it will join the one that is already in Deerfield. It will be a limestone pathway. I think the city is thinking more that as we put pathways in, they are limestone for a number of years and at some point, we'll take a look at whether we need to hard-surface them or not. It's a little bit cheaper to build it this way, but we also find that we don't have to replace the asphalt pathways as quickly if we build them with limestone and first let them settle over the years."

Bids for the pond and pathway project ranged from the winning bid of $588,000 all the way up to $1.13 million.

A detention pond is slightly different than a retention pond. Here are the definitions courtesy of Wikipedia:

A detention basin is an excavated area to protect against flooding. These basins are also called "dry ponds", "holding ponds" or "dry detention basins" if no permanent pool of water exists.

A retention basin, sometimes called a wet pond, wet detention basin or stormwater management pond, is an artificial lake with vegetation around the perimeter, and includes a permanent pool of water in its design.