Just a few years ago, in April of 2009, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and Congressman Rush Holt attended the ceremony at Van Nest Park on Grovers Mill Pond that marked the completion of the pond’s rehabilitation and its restocking with fish. This event culminated a lengthy process that had its beginning more than 40 years ago.
Even then people were talking about the deteriorating condition of the pond due to the silt that was building up on the bottom and the large amount of weed growth every summer. When the weeds began dying off in August, they sent out the putrid odor of hydrogen sulfide that permeated the area. Little by little the pond was becoming choked and stagnant.
Many wondered if the pond could ever be cleaned out. Finally, at some time in the 1960s, members of the local Lions Club, including Larry Dey, a nearby farmer and the pond’s owner, decided to experiment with one method of silt removal: a drag bucket. This was a large metal bucket with its handle attached to a long steel cable. The other end of the cable was wound on a winch geared to a gasoline engine.
The idea was to use the cable to drag the bucket across the silt on the bottom and scoop up a bucketful and deposit it on the bank. Repeated drags would eventually result in a silt-free bottom. The only problem was that on the first drag, the cable snapped and the bucket was lost in the muck on the bottom. The project was over after it had barely begun.
Part of the cable, which was anchored to a nearby telephone pole, remains there today where it was left after the failed experiment. It’s on the pole near the foot of Yeger Road and Bolfmar Avenue. (If you want to check it out, be careful of the poison ivy.) The bucket was recovered just a few years ago in 2008 when the pond was finally dredged.
But in between that failed experiment and the final successful dredging, the pond’s fate was subject to many possibilities. Larry Dey even tried draining it during the winter to see if freezing the weeds would have a beneficial effect the following summer. It didn’t.
Finally, after he decided to give up farming, and as the construction of Sherbrook Estates on his farm loomed, he decided to drain the pond for an extended period and consider other possible uses for his 37 acres. One of these was to do away with the water altogether and build more houses. Big Bear Brook would still flow where it had always been, but that might be a nice touch for the new residential area.
Once, while the pond was drained, I asked a pilot friend to take some pictures of the dry pond from the air. The picture above was taken in March of 1982. The course of Big Bear Brook is clearly seen. In the distance are the now long-gone farms on both sides of Rabbit Hill Road. Another point of interest is the small size of the trees in Van Nest park along Cranbury Road. They had just been planted in two rows, and you can barely see them. This was more than six years before the “War of the Worlds” monument was installed nearby.
About a year after draining the pond, Larry Dey closed the opening in the concrete spillway that let the water out and refilled the pond. He then decided to give the pond and any attached property he owned to West Windsor Township. That way, if it was to be rehabilitated, he would not be responsible.
Over the next 20 years the township formed four citizens’ committees to decide what to do. Scientific and engineering studies were conducted and recommendations were made. The process even had to withstand the change of West Windsor’s government from “Township Committee” form to “Mayor/Council,” a change that set the project back for nearly a decade. One of the new mayor’s first acts was to disband all the “citizen committees” that had provided useful services to the township. His priorities for township administrative efforts did not include the rehab of Grovers Mill Pond.
Finally, under mayors Carson and Hsueh, everything came together, and two projects were planned and actually carried out to completion. The first was the rehabilitation of Grovers Mill dam, and the second was the dredging of the pond itself. It was a long process, but the results are obviously worthwhile. Now if we could only make it freeze again in the winter — and have it stay frozen for a couple of months — we could ice-skate there again. That hasn’t been possible for the past 40 years.
(Please note that the correct pronunciation of the name “Dey” is “dye,” not “day,” as many people say it, incorrectly. Dey is an old family name around these parts and it should be pronounced correctly.)
