Drone Leak Investigation · Government & Municipal
Stormwater Pond & Outfall Leak Survey by drone.
Detention ponds, retention facilities, outfalls, and culverts surveyed for exfiltration, berm seepage, and bypass flow — the drainage infrastructure nobody can see failing until something downstream floods or erodes.
Free phone consult · No pressure · Mon–Sat 8am–6pm PT
Why owners and operators choose it
- Confirms ponds hold and release as designed
- Finds berm seepage and exfiltration paths early
- Documents developer-built facilities before municipal acceptance
- Safe coverage of soft, vegetated, or inaccessible margins
Built for
How the investigation runs
- 1
Facility review
Design drawings establish what the pond is supposed to do — normal water level, outlet structure behaviour, berm geometry. Deviations from design are what the survey hunts.
- 2
Aerial mapping flight
Thermal plus high-resolution visual covers the pond, berms, inlet and outlet works, and the downstream path. Water level, wetted perimeter, and berm condition are captured in one georeferenced dataset.
- 3
Anomaly analysis
Seepage expression on berm faces, thermally distinct inflows that should not exist, scour at outfalls, and saturated zones beyond the design footprint are flagged and ranked.
- 4
Condition report
A facility plan with annotated findings — formatted for public-works files, development acceptance packages, or the consultant's stormwater management review.
Aerial screening + ground confirmation, one company
The aerial survey ranks where the problems are; Leak.ca's ground crews — the same team pinpointing BC leaks since 1999 — confirm them with acoustic correlation, moisture probing, and flood testing where the finding warrants it. One accountable report from first flight to repair-ready coordinates, instead of two vendors pointing at each other.
Frequently asked
What goes wrong with stormwater ponds that this finds?
The common failures are quiet ones: berms seeping through rodent burrows or poorly compacted lifts, liners leaking so the pond never holds design volume, outlets short-circuiting, and exfiltration saturating ground beyond the facility. All express thermally or visually at the surface — and all are far cheaper to fix before a major storm finds them first.
Why survey a developer-built pond before municipal acceptance?
Because once a municipality accepts the facility, its defects become the public's. An aerial condition survey at turnover documents berm condition, water behaviour, and any seepage objectively — either confirming the asset is sound or putting deficiencies on the record while the developer still owns them.
Can you inspect outfalls and culverts too?
The approaches, headwalls, scour patterns, and surrounding ground — yes, and that screening tells you which structures justify CCTV or confined-space entry. We pair naturally with our ground-based CCTV inspection service for the inside-the-pipe half.
Is this useful after a big storm event?
That is one of the main triggers. Post-event flights document how facilities actually performed — overtopping evidence, new erosion, berm damage, blocked outlets — while the evidence is fresh. Several BC owners fly their pond inventory after every significant atmospheric-river event for exactly this reason.
Related drone leak services
Reservoir & Dam Seepage Detection
Thermal and visual reconnaissance of earthen dams, dikes, reservoirs, and embankments — seepage exit points, wet zones on downstream faces, and anomalous vegetation mapped without crews walking unstable slopes.
View serviceUnderground Water Main Leak Survey
Aerial thermal screening of buried water mains and service corridors — kilometres of distribution line surveyed per flight, leak-suspect zones mapped for targeted ground confirmation. The screening layer that shrinks non-revenue water programs from guesswork to a short list.
View servicePost-Storm Portfolio Leak Assessment
After an atmospheric river, windstorm, or freeze event — every roof and site in your portfolio triaged by drone in days, damage and active water entry documented while the evidence is fresh and the insurer's clock is running.
View serviceAerial Moisture Orthomosaic Mapping
The deliverable layer: survey-grade, georeferenced moisture orthomosaics — radiometric thermal fused with RTK photogrammetry — exported to CAD and GIS for engineers, consultants, and owners who need leak evidence they can measure from.
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