Health of pond a concern for Pastorius friends group

Excess water drains out of the Pastorius Park pond after a weekend storm. Dry conditions in the summer lead to stagnation problems. (Photo by James Sturdivant)

by JAMES STURDIVANT

The Friends of Pastorius Park is exploring new ways to improve the health of the park’s centerpiece pond, one of several topics discussed at an annual meeting on April 21 that also featured a talk from historian and author David Contosta.

The spring-fed pond develops a filmy layer and unpleasant smell during the summer months due to stagnation, according to board member Pete O’Connor. Treating the problem has been a perennial concern for the friends group, which in recent years has applied an enzyme purchased from the Fairmount Park Commission.

“It’s organic. It smells like rotten eggs, but it helps to break down the nasty smell,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor told a group of about 15 gathered at a home on Crefeld Street that the association should move beyond symptomatic treatment and try to do something to improve water flow.

“It needs to be aerated. We need some movement in there,” O’Connor said. He said that one idea would be to put in a “bubbler” that would promote aeration and water circulation in the pond. The bubbler would break the surface of the water in “only a minimal way,” he explained, creating less visual impact than a fountain. The main problem is cost: O’Connor said he was told by a firm specializing in pond work that installation would run between $8,000-$10,000.

In a subsequent phone interview, O’Connor said that three existing pumps in the pond “don’t work properly.” The most important is a pump that is supposed to carry water up to where a spring emerges and flows into the pond by way of a channel running in front of the park’s stage. The pumps tend to get clogged by tree waste, especially the spiky balls that fall off sweet gums, and even a grinder installed a few years ago has failed to solve the problem, O’Connor said.  

For the short-term, O’Connor said he was told that barley pellets are a superior, and cheaper, way to treat the effects of stagnation in the pond.

“It’s organic and natural, and promotes fish growth,” he told the group. “You can’t put enough in. You just pour it in by the bucket.”

O’Connor said that he would present a proposal for the bubbler installation to the board in a few weeks.

Other issues covered at the meeting included the need to clear trees and trim shrubbery, the allocation of money for treating mites and aphids on the park’s hemlocks, and sending a letter to police commissioner Sylvester Johnson regarding the problem of cars driving into the park. A recent victory for the friend’s group was the placing of concrete “ballards” where Lincoln Drive dead-ends into the park’s south side. Group president Quita Horan said parking on the grass in this area has been a problem.  

The group held board elections and chose its slate of officers for 2005-06: Quita Horan (president), Dave Braveman (vice president), Marjie Ayres (treasurer) and Harriet Palmer (secretary).

Chestnut Hill College historian David Contosta spoke to the group about the history of the Wissahickon Creek, drawing from research conducted with Carol L. Franklin for a forthcoming book, Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley. In summarizing the first eight chapters of the book, Contosta detailed the history of the creek and humans’ relationship with it over the last 400 years.

The book focuses on two sections of the creek, the “rugged, dramatic schist gorge” running through Philadelphia and the pastoral landscapes of Whitemarsh Township. The headwaters of the 20-mile-long creek, which empties into the Schuylkill River above East Falls, lie under the Montgomeryville Mall, a fact which Contosta said underscores the intensity of suburban development along its upper course.

“A lot of the recent flooding came from runoff in the upper part of the valley,” he said.

Beginning with the Lenni Lenape Indians, who did not actually live in the valley but hunted and fished there, Contosta described the main stages in the development of the creek valley, from wilderness to a center of early American industry (there were once over 50 mills located between East Falls and Ambler), to the urban oasis acquired in stages by the Fairmount Park Commission beginning in 1868.

“A lot of people think they are seeing something like what was there [in the valley] 300 years ago, but they are not,” Contosta said. He highlighted especially the encroachment of invasive plant species and the chestnut blight as having an overwhelming and irreversible impact on the flora and fauna of the valley.

“Up to 50 percent of the trees [in the Wissahickon gorge] were chestnuts,” he said, describing the way the trees’ white blooms made the slopes appear snow-covered in spring and the importance their nuts once held to local people and wildlife. The trees were wiped out entirely by the late 1920s, and the Friends of the Wissahickon organization was formed largely in response to the crisis engendered by the blight, Contosta said.

Contosta will give a fuller account of his research, including a slide presentation, at the annual meeting of the Chestnut Hill Historical Society at Chestnut Hill College on May 1.