While West Windsor Township officials work out their own plans to satisfy their state affordable housing obligations, at least one sector of the population has been given a new home — the fish in Grover’s Mill Pond.##M:[more]##
Dredging operations at the pond wrapped up earlier this month, with about 65,”000 cubic yards of sediment removed and transported to a containment area in Community Park, where it will be mixed in with the soil and, according to Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, used to create a recreational field in the future.
The mayor joked during his Town Hall meeting that structures put into the water to create a habitat for fish and turtles — see photo at right — were “affordable housing for fish.” The mayor is hoping that water recreational sports, like kayaking and canoeing, can be allowed in the coming years.
The completion of the dredging marks the end of a project more than 30 years in the making. During a press conference on November 13, the mayor and Heather Jensen, a project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the project, gave a detailed update on the project, including its history. Restoration work began in August by Select Transportation Inc. of Ohio, the contractor hired by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Township resident Dick Snedeker, who has been heavily involved in getting the restoration efforts off the ground, prepared a summary and timeline of the project. According to his summary, the pond was impounded in the early to mid-18th century to provide power to run the grist or flouring mill at what was then known as Bear Creek. It was given the name Grover in 1860 when Joseph Grover became its owner.
The Dey family later purchased the property in 1931, and had the original dam rebuilt, much in the form in which it is found today, including the five-sided concrete spillway.
Concerns began to mount in the 1960s, when the pond began to show signs of deterioration because of the silt that had been building up on the bottom over the years.
Dick Dahl, another concerned resident, recalled during the press conference that he was curious about it when he first moved to Grover’s Mill, across the street from the lake. He said he looked up information at town hall, but could find no record of ownership. He called the attorney who represented the family from whom he had purchased his property, who investigated and also could not determine the ownership.
He said it was finally determined that Larry Dey’s family had owned the land under the pond because they owned the land around the pond. During that time, the federal government had begun to worry about the safety of dams all over the nation, and in 1979 the Army Corps of Engineers was commissioned to study the dam at the pond, Dahl said. The dam was later found to be a hazardous structure.
Dahl said Dey became concerned in the early 1980s because the state DEP told him he had to study the dam and survey it. “The first thing he tried to do was give it to the township,” Dahl said. “On the advice of their attorney, they turned it down. They didn’t want that liability.”
An advisory committee later recommended to the township that it take over ownership of the pond, after a survey found that of 265 township residents, all but one favored restoration of the pond. In 1982, the pond was refilled about a year after the draining, but “during the drained period, the pond bed was observed to be poorly drained, with persistent pooling of water following rain showers and overlying wet and muddy conditions due to the accumulated silt and decaying vegetation,” according to the chronology provided by Snedeker.
Prior to Hsueh’s mayorship, signed quit-claim deeds from the surrounding property owners had already been acquired, except from one — the owner of the mill house. So, Hsueh started negotiations and was able to get the state involved. Eventually, the state sent a letter to the township and the property owner stating that both are liable parties and that the state would file a lawsuit if neither did anything. Finally, the property owner signed off on the easements.
In 2006, after many years, the dam was finally reconstructed, and in 2007 the township was able to get the county to fix the bridge on Clarksville Road, which the county owns. At the same time, the Army Corps of Engineers was working with the DEP to secure all the necessary permits to go ahead with the dredging.
After the dredging, the level of the water in the pond went from two to three feet to nine feet, Hsueh pointed out. The turtle basking platforms and habitats for fish — a five gallon bucket with concrete and wooden boards stuck haphazardly like a tree under water — will provide a place for them “to hide and hang around,” Jensen said.
“The purpose of the project was to create fish habitats because there wasn’t enough oxygen available in the water because all of the excess nutrients that were in the silty sediment that we’ve since removed,” Jensen added. “All those nutrients were there because they ran off of the farm fields. It used to be a highly agricultural area. There used to be a lot of aquatic plant growth, and it created lots of high temperatures and lots of other things that fish don’t like.”
The containment site for the silt is located upstream in Community Park. At 11 acres, it is in the shape of a big dirt bowl with a fence around it.”Once it dries, we’re going to mix all that material in with the dirt we used to create the hole,” Jensen said. Just as a precaution, “we have to do testing of the material once it’s all mixed in,” Jensen said. “We don’t anticipate that there will be any issues.”
The total cost of the project was $4.97 million for the original 50,”000 cubic yards specified in the contract. Last month, the council approved adding $150,”000 to remove another 15,”000 cubic yards.
“The way this program works is that it’s cost-shared,” Jensen explained. “The federal government pays 65 percent of the project,” with the township picking up the rest.
“We are going to turn this area into something more attractive as a destination of West Windsor,” Hsueh said.
– Cara Latham
