As long ago as 1969, when most on the campus were stomping around about more global matters, there were some who vented over the sad shape of the pond. A report to the faculty that year from the Campus Natural Environment Committee blamed the decline of the watery icon entirely on the ducks, accusing them of rooting out plants, the nesting place of bugs intended as the diet of small fish that, in turn, were meant to feed the big fish whose job it was to keep the pond churned up and healthy. The cussed ducks also were peaking the Ph with their poop.
A sternly worded committee recommendation that the duck population "be maintained at a maximum of two individuals" went unheeded, not only by beleaguered College authorities but also by the ducks, who multiplied from the loaves of day-old bread and small fishes. Worse, the ducks soon were joined by legions of gulls, forced by the closing of Maine's open dumps to move to the campus and live off the lush offal of students.
And so it went.
Last spring the ice sank on April 17. Two days later the shallow west end of the pond was in full bloom with pickerel weed. It was time for action, and the College responded predictably--it formed a committee. From that point on it was hard to keep a straight face.
Plant and marine biologists, environmental analysts, hydraulic engineers, landscape architects and assorted other specialists worked hard on a restoration plan. For the only time through the entire adventure, experts outnumbered kibitzers.
Steve Mohr, Portland landscape wizard and a man who knows an adventure when he smells one, signed on to help. In early September, armed with drawings and charts, he met with President Bill Cotter and others to firm up a plan. Mohr explained that the gradual accumulation of some two feet of silt, brought on by erosion, had lowered the water volume and increased nutrient levels with unwanted loading of phosphorus, thus accelerating eutrophication and macrophyte growth.
Alan Lewis, head of the Physical Plant Department and a practical Maine man to the core, offered a satisfying summary: "After fifty years," he said, "her bottom's gone soft."
Mohr proposed draining the pond, scraping out the guk, and filling it up again. Cotter, who has a thing about campus tidiness, was feeling the full burden of his office. He wanted assurances of success and clear water by Commencement. Here folks normally given to precision became vague and tentative. Estimates on the time required to refill the pond after a proper cleaning varied from 72 hours to four months. Nobody was making guarantees. In the end, Cotter agreed to launch Colby's second great Venture of Faith (the original one produced the Mayflower Hill campus and created the man-made pond in the first place).
Once word was out, local, state and federal regulatory agencies--undaunted by uncertainty of their jurisdictions--tripped over one another in an unseemly eagerness to participate.
First in line was the local planning board, citing a statute requiring permission to make unsightly disturbances to any large piece of ground--never mind that the plot in question is normally under water or that the proposed work was aimed at improving the view. After a solemn hearing, a permit was granted.
The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IFW) temporarily fretted over the fish until agents learned that the smallmouth bass that inhabit the place had tapeworm. The department promptly proposed that the whole lot of them be killed with rotenone and buried in the back forty. Alert to the political fallout of killing so many fish in plain view of local residents who had for years been denied the opportunity to catch them, the IFW offered a second option--use nets to move them to the Messalonskee Stream, where, it turns out, the resident bass population is already wormy.
The College chose option two, whereupon the fisheries folks issued a pair of permits, one for relocating the fish and a second for the eventual re-stocking of wormless cousins. These fish agents also said they would be on hand when the plug was pulled, to be on the lookout for any rare, threatened or endangered species. (The best they could find was a strange turtle, a cross between a Red Slider and a Florida Cooter, evidence that not all the fooling around in that area has taken place in parked cars.) [CONTINUE]
