Category: Editorials

Posted on

Bogged Down on Mirror Pond

A river wants to be a river, not a pond. You can make a river behave like a pond for a while by putting a dam in front of it, but sooner or later – sooner if the pond is shallow – the area outside of the main channel will fill up with sediment and the river will go back to being a river again.

Therein lies the dilemma for the City of Bend, which for decades has been wrestling with what to do about Mirror Pond.

The pond, formed by a dam built a century ago, is often described as “the jewel of downtown Bend,” but that jewel has a tendency to tarnish. Silt keeps building up until the pond threatens to become a mud flat – a problem exacerbated by spring and summer irrigation flows, which wash soil away from riverbanks upstream.

The city has had to dredge Mirror Pond once before, in 1984. Back then the cost was only $312,000. Now the silt has gotten thick again and the city is thinking about another dredging project. But the cost of doing that, including disposing of the possibly contaminated silt, would now run into the millions.

The city can’t spare that kind of money. It decided it couldn’t even spare $500,000 for a study to figure out the best way to handle the sedimentation problem.

So instead it looks like the city is going to ask the voters – maybe as soon as November 2012 – to create a tax district that will pay for present and future dredging of Mirror Pond.

That’s a bad idea, and here’s why:

Committing to dredge Mirror Pond in perpetuity would put the city on a never-ending – and very expensive – treadmill. The need for dredging probably is going to get more frequent as more development occurs up-river from the pond. (It took 73 years before the pond needed dredging the first time, but only about 25 before it needed dredging again.) And you know it’s not going to get any cheaper.

The new tax district also would increase the overall tax burden on local residents and make them less likely to approve future levies for other, higher-priority needs like police or schools.

Advocates of dredging act as if the only alternative is allowing the pond to turn into a mud flat. But they’re offering a false choice.

In place of Mirror Pond, picture a sparkling river flowing through a broad, green meadow. Imagine people canoeing, kayaking, fishing, bird-watching, picnicking, or just sitting on the banks and watching the water go by. That isn’t so horrible, is it?

If you want a clearer idea of what it might be like, take a look at River Bend Park upstream from the Old Mill District, where the riverbank has been allowed to “go natural.” It’s become one of Bend’s most popular spots for locals and visitors alike.

It’s time for some out-of-the-box – or maybe that should be “out-of-the-mud” – thinking about Mirror Pond. Instead of trudging along on the endless dredging treadmill, the city should give the dredging idea THE BOOT. Permanently.

Source:  The Source Weekly Editorial Board

Posted on

The price to save Mirror Pond

Bend’s Mirror Pond is more than a pond. It is an arresting symbol of the city that should not be lost. As the years go by, the pond is becoming a mudflat. Sediment has settled behind the dam.

Geese may soon waddle rather than swim. Paddles may be used to push, not row. Bend’s butterfly is becoming a caterpillar.

The effort to fix the pond has become as muddied as the pond.

The consultant hired to evaluate alternatives has been let go. There is no money for an analysis weighing alternative solutions, costing maybe $500,000 — let alone a fix which might add another $5 million.

Spending some money on a study for alternatives seems inescapable. Without a rigorous analysis, the state or the federal government would likely refuse approval of a fix. Without an analysis, chances of getting the federal government to chip in any money would be lost.

Where will the money come from?

The city of Bend doesn’t have it. The Bend Park & Recreation District may be doing relatively better financially, but it would be hard to argue that pond upkeep is part of its mission.

So the city is looking at creating a taxing district, perhaps putting it before voters in November 2012.

We’d vote for a taxing district to pay to dredge Mirror Pond. But is that what the tax would pay for? Would the tax sunset? Would the taxing district create a permanent, new bureaucratic fiefdom?

Some have proposed that the natural, permanent fix would be to remove dams and let the Deschutes resume its course. The pond would become a river again. There likely would be less need to come back in another 25 years and dredge again, though Bend’s centerpiece would be gone.

A taxing district for Mirror Pond has a chance, but only if voters know what they are paying for.

Source: The Bulletin

Posted on

Get Mirror Pond fixed, not studied

Ask most Bend residents and most visitors what they think of when they think of Bend, and one thing is sure to top the list. That’s Mirror Pond, along which Drake Park runs through the heart of Bend.

Yet the pond is in danger of disappearing even as city government and others continue to study the issue to death.

The newest attempt to decide what to do with the pond, which is becoming ever more clogged with silt, was announced this week. The city, the local park district, Pacific Power and William Smith Properties have combined resources and hired a project manager to study the problem and analyze possible solutions. Hooray! Let’s all just hope it doesn’t take Michael McLandress of Brightwater Collaborative LLC six years to complete his work.

That’s how long a current fix to the pond’s silting problems has been in the planning stages. First news accounts of the effort appeared way back in 2004, and they’ve cropped up every few months since then. Unfortunately, the planning continues apace while we seem no nearer an answer than we were six years ago. Most recent estimates of the cost to fix the pond were $5 million, though that may well have changed by now.

Contrast all that with the last dredging of the pond, which occurred in 1983. Neighbors along the pond got together and came up with a plan to remove the silt that had built up there; they went to City Council, got the plan approved and the project was done in under a year. Total cost? Just about $300,000.

Clearly, Bend is a more complicated place today than it was way back in 1983. Any plan to clear silt — the product, in part, of fluctuating river flows that occur when water is impounded upstream — must include a variety of options from which to choose. Those options no doubt will cover the spectrum from doing nothing to a full-scale attempt to restore the pond to what it looked like when it was created in 1910 after Pacific Power built the dam on its south end.

In reality, though, doing nothing is really not an option, nor are other possibilities that do not restore the look of the pond. It’s simply too important a part of Bend and its history to be allowed to disappear under silt and vegetation. That may be more “natural,” but natural is hardly the goal in this case, or, if it is, it shouldn’t be. Rather, the goal should be to preserve this one part of Bend’s history that doesn’t center on timber or snow or agriculture but instead is valued and always has been valued simply because it is beautiful.

It’s unclear why, after six years, we’re not much closer to clearing the pond than we were in the beginning. We are not, however, and every added delay is likely to drive costs up still further. Knowing that, McLandress and those who hired him should set themselves an aggressive schedule and get the job done. Finally.

Source: The Bulletin