Brook Falls pond overflow crack, broken aerators prompt temporary fix and engineer review

Public Works Director Dusty De Hoyes told the Parks and Recreation Commission on Feb. 27 that Brook Falls Park’s pond has a cracked overflow that is allowing water to escape from the interior and that the park’s aerators and fountains are failing when switched on.

“...the crack is probably at that point where the water is, it's probably just below the water level,” Dusty De Hoyes said, describing the overflow failure and how water was coming up from the inside rather than spilling over the edge.

De Hoyes said staff cleared an island in the pond, counted duck eggs, and documented wildlife currently using the habitat. He said the crew estimated the leak at roughly “about 7 gallons a minute” before staff installed a temporary inflatable bladder as a plug. After the bladder was set, he said water levels returned to the edge of the pond and that the temporary measure was “working really, really well.”

Commissioners and staff discussed possible permanent repairs. De Hoyes said he and Councilman Leonard Young and Councilman Ashford had a “really promising meeting” about what it would take to repair the cracked overflow so it would function as designed. He said an engineer will provide numbers and a scope for properly shoring up the area, “block the water off, scoop it out, lay it back in properly, you know, in concrete, and at a reasonable depth so that it will actually function the way it's supposed to function.”

De Hoyes warned that more aggressive options such as dredging or letting the pond drain would be disruptive to the pond’s ecosystem and costly. He said staff has two dump trucks available if a full dredge were undertaken, but that dredging “would just wreck that whole ecosystem” and produce significant odor while work completed.

He also reported intermittent failures of the fountains and aerators: when turned on, one unit will run for a second and then trip the breaker. Staff scheduled a vendor visit in the coming weeks to inspect the fountain and aerator mechanisms.

Commissioners asked about flooding risk from the temporary plug; De Hoyes said the plug is lower than the dam edge and the pond would overflow the dam before water would route into the overflow, meaning the plug itself was not expected to raise flood risk.

Next steps: staff expects an engineering report from a contracted engineer and follow-up pricing from Leonard Young’s review; the temporary inflatable plug remains in place while a permanent repair plan is prepared.

Ending: De Hoyes said staff will bring back engineer estimates and continue minor maintenance work while the longer-term repair scope and funding options are developed.