The pond at Canby Community Park could see some changes in the future if a grant proposal goes through.

City working on grant application that would make pond deeper, healthier

There may be something interesting happening with Canby’s Community Pond.

According to Jerry Nelzen, Canby public works director, there could be some funds available to dig out the pond and give it more depth. Currently, the pond is fairly shallow and that limits what it can be used for moving forward.

Nelzen said that economic development and tourism coordinator Tyler Nizer, and public works operation supervisor Spencer Polack, “have been working on a grant to dig out the community park pond.”

“It’s shallow. Parks Advisory thought it would be a great idea and we wanted to run it by you folks and see if you thought it would be good,” Nelzen told the Canby City Council on July 16. “We would just have to provide the trucking and the state would assist with all of this, so it sounds like a great deal.”

The idea actually came via the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who approached the city about opening up possibilities for the pond via grant money.

“It’s not very often that a state agency reaches out and says ‘Hey, we have money and we think you have something that could be a good project,’” said Jamie Stickel, the city’s economic development director.

Mayor Brian Hodson noted that there had been talk of fountains, or some type of aeration for the pond, in the past to deal with some of the overgrowth issues. He wondered if that was part of the plan now via this grant.

Stickel said that the “piece about the aeration wasn’t originally included because the proposal came about from ODFW,” and they likely weren’t aware. She did say that some type of aeration could be included in the formal grant proposal.

The idea from ODFW came about because that organization does events in Community Park. They were talking to Nizer about fishing events and asked if the city would like to do more events there?

“And in those conversations, ODFW acknowledged that if the pond was a little deeper, you could stock it with more fish and potentially have more events and stagger the fish stocking to the pond so there could be more events,” said Stickel, who added that ODFW said that Canby’s pond is very unique not only for Canby, but the area as a whole.

The pond has issues with growth of algae and other plants, requiring treatment. A deeper pond and aeration could offer some relief in that area, as well as provide a larger habitat for fish and other pond-dwellers to exist.