The pond at Center Springs Park has turned a vivid green, the result of an algae bloom nurtured by warm weather and low water flow.
Town officials are working on short- and long-term solutions, Public Works Director Tim Bockus said.
The pond was dredged last year for the first time in about 20 years, part of an ongoing effort to raise the park’s profile and make it more of a destination. Missouri-based Energy Resources, Inc. removed 11,000 cubic yards of sediment from the pond at a cost of $656,054.
Installing aeration equipment _ a pond-bottom “bubbler” and a fountain _ has been part of the overall plan to keep algae in check after the dredging, but the work is not scheduled to be done until the spring, Bockus said.
In the meantime, options to battle the algae include increasing water flow by lowering the outlet gate at the Edgerton Street end of the six-acre pond, Bockus said. Officials, however, do not want to make conditions even more conducive to algae by lowering the water level too much and for too long without some assurance of rain to fill the pond again, he said. Another option is to do nothing.
“It will correct itself to some extent with colder temperatures,” Bockus said.
The town also has contacted the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for help in identifying the type of algae present. Chemical treatment has to be customized to target different kinds of algae, and town officials, Bockus said, want to know “how aggressive we should be.”
“It’s a whole process that has to be orchestrated,” he said.
The 57-acre park forms a basin that drains water from a wide area, so the pond gets lawn and garden fertilizer, oils and solvents from the roadways and anything else the rain carries down.
Created in 1917 with land donations from the Cheney and Hilliard families, the park was a popular gathering place for ice skating and other activities for decades. But use diminished and, by the 1980s, Center Springs had fallen into disrepair. Many residents have said they did not know about the park or saw it as a a hangout for vagrants, a place to avoid.
Attention has been focused on the park over the past several years. The town drew up a master plan for improvements, a friends of the park group was established, a disc golf course was installed, police increased patrols to curb alcohol use and other illegal activity. town workers cut down dead trees and removed brush and a new entrance was created on the Broad Street side.
Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com
