Water drains, leaving neighbors bewildered
Call it “The Case of the Disappearing Pond.” Last Friday folks living in the Olean Street neighborhood of Tatnuck Square noticed something screwy about Cooks Pond. It was shrinking. Drastically. In this rainy month of August, it just didn’t make sense.
Cooks Pond, which covers an area of more than 20 acres on a 45-acre parcel of land, is fed from three different brooks in the hills above Tatnuck Square.
The water then goes through Tatnuck Square and into Patches Pond and its reservoir, then Coes Pond and its reservoir, eventually pouring down into the Middle and Blackstone rivers.
After receiving a call, Department of Public Works Assistant Director of Sewers Joseph Buckley says a crew went up to the site and verified that the water level in the pond was indeed dropping. However, he also pointed out that the water level is not in the DPW’s control. The pond is owned by the Smith Pond Corp., which is operated by the Tatnuck Island Club.
Buckley says that anytime a pond is raised or lowered or anything “in the vicinity of a wetland,” the Worcester Conservation Commission needs to be informed. “I put a call through to Kate Donovan at the Conservation Commission when I found out that it was lowered,” he says. “She said the folks responsible for the pond lower it seasonally for weed control.”
Peter McKone is not only the chair of the Worcester Conservation Commission, he is also a Tatnuck Island Club member. While admitting it is an embarrassing and unfortunate mishap, he says the water level is now “coming up nicely.”
So what happened? As McKone explains in detail, essentially a valve was left open, allowing nearly all of the water to drain from the pond.
He says the pond has to be inspected regularly by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. The last time it was inspected was last fall.
“The report went to DCR and basically [we were told] we had to clean it off -- there was a lot of scrub brush growing on both faces of the dam. We were told that we needed to remove all that,” McKone says. The Tatnuck Club hired an engineering firm to do the job.
“One of the people in the club apparently took it on themselves to lower the water a bit to trim the brush on the water side of the dam. Apparently they thought they had closed the valve and hadn’t.”
McKone says from a conservation standpoint, the drainage will not have any residual effects on the pond.
“I don’t think it was down enough to have any long-term impact. If it drains down too far it can kill fish,” he says.
Although McKone had no way of measuring how much water was drained out of the pond, when asked how long the valve was open, he said “it was probably open for 10 days.” o
