Page 6 - May-June24 Vol42 No1

COLLEGEDALE By Lisa Hood Skinner
Old City-Owned Retention Pond

Now Swims with the Fishes

They say that everybody loves a good
fish story. The City of Collegedale is no
exception.
An old city-owned Collegedale
retention pond, previously dubbed by
locals as “the duck pond,” has been given
an extended and improved life for a new
generation of fishermen and women.
Eric Sines, Collegedale Public Works
Director, said the pond was built “around
25-30 years ago for remediation credits
from development. After a while it was
called the duck pond because people
would bring their domesticated ducks and
drop them off there.”
Drop-off for Ducks Wasn’t Working
The pond required attention. “Public
Works would have to clean up after the
ducks and remove injured ducks, because
the snapping turtles were biting them,” he
said. “I just wanted a place for Collegedale
residents and locals to be able to walk the
greenway and fish here. I had seen plenty
of kids fishing in the pond, but not really
catching much,” he said.
“Kids always had fished in this pond.
I used to fish in this pond 20 years ago
when the greenway was first built. But
over the last five or six years, the fish
population had been going downhill. The
pond was not being maintained and the
leaf litter created poor water conditions,”
he said.
Sines wanted the current generation of
kids to have a better experience with his
boyhood fishing hole. He looked around
at how other cities and towns had dealt
with similar conversions.
Getting Advice on Rejuvenating the
Pond
Determined to rehab the old duck pond
into something better, Sines said he talked
with “some fish people who I know. They
did some testing, giving us solid advice to
follow.”
“We had a local volunteer service come
out to rescue and relocate the ducks. Then
we caught out all the fish with cast nets,
and hand relocated all the turtles once
the pond was drained,” he explained. “We
6 TPW May/June 2024