The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was more tentative. Although there was some opinion that the College needed a "Non Point Discharge Permit" to flush the water out the underground pipe--where the overflow has been sent since 1930--the EPA folks let the draining go forward with a wink and a nod, explaining that "technicalities" prevented them from putting it all in writing.
The Army Corps of Engineers politely wiped its hands of the whole affair with a startling geographic observation from the chief of the regulatory branch, who wrote that Johnson Pond "is not considered a water of the United States." As much as the Army would have liked to be involved, it simply wasn't possible.
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), asked to have a look for any hazards in the project, came to the altogether sensible conclusion that the pond was, in fact, going to be a whole lot safer without the water. Otherwise, they said, they worried that the muck might be so deep as to present an "engulfment hazard" to curious students. (It wasn't that deep.)
Armed with o.k.'s from the Planning Board, IFW, DEP, EPA, ACE and OSHA, the project was a go, Gus Libby opened the drain, and four days later the water was nearly gone. The rich bottom muck, exposed to the sunlight, promptly turned the pond into a giant petri dish.
For several days, curious onlookers prowled the banks. Hopes that the pond would surrender misplaced refrigerators and Volkswagens soon were dashed. Instead, all that could be seen were a few beer kegs and enough cement blocks to make a barn, dragged onto the ice to mark boundaries of long-ago hockey games.
The discovery near the north bank of a pair of booted legs, feet pointed skyward, sent security guard Jimmy Dickinson tip-toeing to the edge. It was not Jimmy Hoffa. "It's either a mannequin or a dead man with two wooden legs," Dickinson proclaimed.
Word of the pond cleaning soon spread on the World Wide Web. Melvin Lyon '52 e-mailed from Little Rock, Ark., asking the crew to keep an eye out for his wallet, lost during an unauthorized swim in 1951. A woman from Oregon wrote hoping for word of the discovery of a diamond ring, flung into the deep in an engagement-busting pique in the early 1970s. She never married the man, she said, but always rued the loss of a fine piece of jewelry.
The origin of the mysterious mannequin surfaced as well. Ari Druker '93 e-mailed a confession from Japan. Seems that, in September 1992, he and a few co-conspirators (Southall, Gillis, West & Morgan) found the thing during a pond treasure hunt. It was taken to the Heights, showered and properly clothed in Colby boxers, where it stood sentinel outside the lair known as Heights 301 (Southall, Druker, Yormak & Hostler) for the entire year. Late at night, after Commencement 1993, it was, with tearful farewells, returned to the pond. (They asked to have it back for their fifth reunion this spring, but the dummy was reclaimed by the rightful owner--a local merchant who rented it to student party-makers in 1972 and never got it back.)
Once the pond was empty and somewhat dry, Don Gurney, who has dug more Mayflower Hill holes (and uprooted more underground cables) than any man in history, got the bid to remove the muck. Stalled only briefly by The Great Ice Storm of '98, he and his men worked through the winter, scraping up and carting off some 14,000 cubic feet of the stuff (which Colby will keep to mix with sand and make powerful loam for campus lawns and gardens).
On February 23, 1998, the job was declared finished. In a month, the pond was near full. The new water has an odd coffee color. Grounds supervisor Keith Stockford offers an ominous explanation. "It's only silt," he says. "Sooner or later it will all sink to the bottom." [TABLE OF CONTENTS]
