Lat night, City Council narrowly voted to support a plan put forth by the Mirror Pond Ad Hoc Committee and recently approved by the Bend Park & Recreation District Board, to replace the failing dam with a more natural feature that would maintain Mirror Pond. The proposal’s success relies on a public-private partnership and investment by developers into the surrounding area.
Now that the plan has the approval of Council, Rep. Knute Buehler (R-Bend) can move forward with a bill seeking $5 million from Oregon Lottery funds to help kickstart the project. He introduced the bill, HB 3283, on Tuesday.
“The Mirror Pond proposal will restore the river to a more natural flow, create more recreational options, and open the area for economic development and improvement of public parks,” Buehler said in a release today. “While there are other short-term solutions that would clean up sediment in Mirror Pond, this is the only solution that presents a long lasting vision for our community, one that will pass on a better Bend for our children and grandchildren.”
The Mirror Pond Ad-Hoc Committee unveiled its Mirror Pond and Downtown Redevelopment Concept last November to addressing the failing Newport Dam and the local landmark that is Mirror Pond. In the interest of avoiding taxing residents directly for the project, the committee drew a plan that involves selling or renting publicly owned land to private developers to generate revenue. It also sought to balance public opinion. In surveys, local residents were evenly split between two options—keeping the dam (and saving Mirror Pond) and letting the Deschutes River run free.
“How do you bring those two polarizing opinions together?” Horton asked at the November unveiling. To that end, the proposal would replace the dam with a cascading rock structure that allows safe fish passage while maintaining Mirror Pond’s water levels. It also includes plans to build out portions of the river bank where sediment frequently gets deposited.
However, support for the plan is far from unanimous. In addition to the Council’s 4-3 decision—with Mayor Jim Clinton, and councilors Nathan Boddie and Barb Campbell dissenting—a number of local residents are protesting the proposal, and the bill, arguing that there may be better uses of public funds, and that questions remain about both the projects environmental sustainability and financial feasibility.
What do you think should be done about Mirror Pond? Take our poll and sound off in the comments.
This article appears in Mar 18-25, 2015.
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What’s funny is, without reading the article, I knew exactly how the vote would breakdown. Some on the council are more friendly with developers than others. Thanks to Barb Campbell, Nathan Boddie and Jim Clinton for having the courage of their convictions.
I don’t think Rep. Buehler’s bill is very well thought out. I vote to hold PacificCorps responsible for the removal of the dam and putting the area back to pre-project conditions. Let the people of Bend see what a free flowing stream thru town looks like. If they prefer a pond, then apply for state funds and a water permit to build a new impoundment. Do not link fixing the pond to a re-development plan. They have different time lines, funding, management and stakeholders. Do not put the City, Parks or taxpayers on the hook for dam removal and reclamation whose costs could exceed 20 million dollars. Oregon statutes state that”When a hydro project is taken out of service, the project must be decommissioned to restore the stream habitat.” PacificCorps should be held responsible to do just that.
nwsailor
I can’t get far enough past my frustration over eminent domain and destruction of water overlay zones to make an intelligent appraisal of the plan. I’ve heard enough BS already that I really don’t believe much of what parks and wreck (yes, on purpose) claims anymore.
I don’t know much about most of this proposal, but I do know quite a bit about one section of it. I’ve tried to discuss the issue with multiple entities, but I’m starting to get the impression that everyone fears the long arm of the parks dept. When/how did they get so much power, anyway? I think it’s high time they were issued a full pair of boots for their behavior.
I watched the Council meeting last night on TV. While I can appreciate the incredible amount of thought and work that has been put into this issue, I was turned off by what seemed like disingenuous statements regarding the content of the motion to approve at the very end. Both Doug Knight and Victor Chudowsky transparently tried to obscure the fact that the motion was in fact a vote to endorse the Preferred Alternative – claiming that the vote was merely for some innocuous statement regarding ‘a commitment to further study’ etc. etc. Meanwhile, it was obvious from the many hours of testimony that Bend’s citizens are not comfortable with the ‘Urban Renewal’ portions of the Preferred Alternative and I was disappointed that 4 out of 7 of our City Councilors chose to ignore this fact.
Where there is a will there is a way and I refuse to believe that (1) Pacificorps cannot be compelled to pay for what needs to be done, and (2) our public spaces at Mirror Pond must be ceded to private interests to finance a project that improves the river. As a longtime resident of Bend, it is defeating to see the town become systematically gentrified in a way that living wage earners get squeezed out of the town that we love. Cheers to Jim Clinton, Nathan Boddie and Barb Campbell for having the courage to resist the assertion that this is an all-or-nothing, nor-or-never decision. The Ad Hoc Committee to should roll their sleeves up and come back with a plan (or process) that doesn’t have half the town up in arms.
Watching the city council meeting and the testimony of my fellow citizens’ comments, I was struck by the intelligence of these participants and the wealth of experience that is missing from that ‘majority’ of council members.
* why hasn’t a navigation study been done on the Deschutes? Hmmm Smith developers et al might NOT be able to claim they own the Bend portion
* the citizens of Bend should make the council rescind the fast one they pulled on us…fast tracking the height variance to 40′ along the river, without allowing appropriate comment
* finally, the comment from one speaker that “…they will be remembered as the ones who sold the river…”
I watched the broadcast and I thought Jason Bowerman from Bend paddle trail alliance had the most intelligent comments to make. http://www.bendpaddletrailalliance.org/content1.asp?cat=3&id=1
Jason played a major roll in the Colorado dam removal ( making it human and fish friendly)and he helped raise the money to do it.
Most of the other nice people who made comments where blubbering products of parents from the sixty’s who where on acid both the day they were conceived as well as the day they where born. It was like “Dude we should just like.. chill out and drain that pond down to a mud pit for the kids to play in dude .. totally” Come of folks if we leave things just up to Mayor Jim Clinton and Barb(Foster Fell)Campbell we will be in big trouble. Both Barb(Foster Fell) Campbell and Jim Clinton have us on a major Buzz Kill on any growth.. not even housing. If you don’t like the cost of housing in Bend ,either mortgage or rent you can blame the folks who don’t expand our city limits UGB.(Sorry.. had to throw that in there) The redevelopment opens the river up for both fish and humans.. It rocks folks.. both for us humans,the fish and the health of the river. Foster Fell and Barb Campbell the East coast is calling your name for you go back there as soon as you can. We didn’t ask for you to screw up our city with your wacky comments and input at city council meetings. So sad.
Speaking of Parks and Rec Director Horton, during one of his trips to the podium at Wednesday’s City Council meeting he said Parks and Rec could give the City Council some advice about “flying under the radar” on this issue. That speaks volumes about Parks and Rec and their attitude towards the public (ie the folks who pay Horton’s salary). Hopefully, some strong candidates for the Park and Rec board will emerge in this upcoming election, candidates who support transparency. Horton and his board have created this Mirror Pond Urban Renewal scheme and foisted it onto four City Councilors. As we saw when the dam broke last year, Mirror Pond is a mud hole. There’s a river channel surrounded by muddy rocks. No amount of dredging will change that. It is an unhealthy segment of the river. Its beauty is half an inch deep. Ask anyone who knows anything about rivers. Impeding the flow with a dam or anything else changes the health of the river for the worse. The pond is un-natural, un-healthy and nothing more than a fading picture post card. I don’t buy the claim that Pacific Power will stop bargaining if the Council doesn’t offer this so-called “vision.” BS. Pacific Power wants to get rid of the dam. So let them de-commission it and clean up the mess it leaves behind. Buehler’s $5 million would be much better spent on things that are really needed in this city–more affordable housing, sidewalks, accessibility, expanded public transit. What we don’t need is an urban renewal project on the banks of the Deschutes River.
River health is a lot more than just taking the dam out. I agree partially with Bowerman’s comments to the council and appreciate his activism and advocacy a great deal, but I don’t agree with the idea that people who care about the health of the River should focus elsewhere. The River from Headwaters to Mouth need our stewardship, ESPECIALLY the stretch that runs through town. Of course the Deschutes will never be what it was pre-colonization, I don’t think the “free flow” crowd is implying that. But what good is fish passage if the water temperatures in the pond are too high to be habitable? The voice of science hasn’t been very loud in all this.
What if Bend became a truly visionary place- looking far beyond the next phase of Urban Growth. What if we became the second city in the nation (after Spokane) to advocate for the Deschutes being proclaimed a Rights Bearing Entity (cause it is)? What if we made the old powerhouse a permanent farmers market and truly welcoming public space? What if we gave huge incentives for human powered transportation, like a free growler fill from Deschutes Brewery for every ten miles biked or walked(what do you think, Gary? A little Mirror Pond Pale Ale as a way to sponsor sustainability)? What if we had customer shuttles and deliveries as the only downtown traffic? What if we took out the roads downtown and planted a food forest in the streets, irrigating it with grey water from downtown restaurants? What if we told the “developers” that for each building they were to invest in, 1/2 of it had to be devoted low cost rent for artisans and micro-businesses? What if we demanded that there were no absentee landlords in this town? We could get truly creative about how to handle both things, and look way further down the road then 100 years? Oh, wait, but this isn’t part of the issue, right? This is just the 50,000 foot view of what the Vision. Could. Be.
When will it be acknowledged that the river is a completely separate issue from that of the Downtown Redevelopment? When will we acknowledge that it seems sneaky and sleazy to link the two issues?
There is a group of voices who value a lot more than revenue dollars that are getting louder, and I was glad to hear Mayor Clinton acknowledge those voices. There is a population here that wants to live Bioregionally and is interested in exploring ways to do so, with great creativity, if the council would listen.
Until the next stage however, why don’t we just park some houseboats on Mirror Pond, charge ’em rent. Housing crisis solved. Raise more money for The Cause. That was a joke, by the way.
It’s surprising how literally some people are taking the vision renderings, which are something of a first draft! The concept has real potential and is the first proposal which gives both ” sides” of the debate something of a win/win.
Now more than ever those who want to express concerns or insights have the opportunity to weigh in and to shape the conversation & help find creative solutions to the challenges ahead.
To all of the passionate “save the river people” who may feel angry and dis-affected right now; there are so many places where we can make a much bigger difference for overall river health than one river mile in an urban environment. Please get involved with the Deschutes River Conservancy, Upper Deschutes Watershed Council or Trout Unlimited in their effort to restore a more normalized year round flow to the Deschutes River. More than anything else, restoring flow as well as access for fish(which this plan addresses as a key goal) will bring the greatest benefit to the entire river system.
The sort of character of Mirror and Mill “pond”s, while artificial, as macro pools separated by cascading drops is actually completely consistent with other reaches along the upper Deschutes. What is out of character are the 4 major dam impediments to migration which native redband trout so desperately need. I for one am proud to see the first of these four dams being retrofitted with recreational and fish passage, and applaud the hard work and fundraising effort of the DRC to create fish passage at the North Unit dam. Why not look at BOTH of the two remaining dams if we are going to develop a real “vision” for the transformation of the urban reaches of the Deschutes River?
The council and Bend Parks and Rec, with input from the community, now have the opportunity to shape the urban river environment of Bend for the next century. It should be viewed by elected officials as a responsibility not to be taken lightly. Hopefully known best practices of riparian restoration and hydraulic engineering will be put used to inform the detailing of the plan as if continues to evolve from this first draft. It may be possible to mitigate the silt accumulation in the “Pond” if the surface water elevation can be changed seasonally, this should be part of further study of the management of Mirror Pond and could potentially save tax payers millions in future dredging needs if implemented and managed correctly.
“Flying under the Radar” is exactly what is going on here. As someone who spoke at the meeting in support of scientifically objective ecological restoration, and as someone who has observed the extreme gentrification of my hometown since being born here in 1982, I am grateful to Ms. Campbell, Dr. Boddie, Mayor Clinton, and the growing tide of voices who also spoke out for the health and life of the river. These voices contrast the superficial aesthetics of a privileged sector within this municipality, which has over many decades grow very comfortable operating in a exclusively selfish manner, beyond the reach of genuine scrutiny.
As I learned the history of my home watershed (I did NOT learn this history in school, sadly), my heart was broken at the loss inflicted upon this place. I read in the diaries of John C. Fremont of a native savannah of giant Ponderosa trees stretching the length of the eastern Cascades. These trees fell, converted to become Capital, some of it still sitting at the bottom of Brooks Resources bank account. I found pictures of Bull Trout the size of a small child, pulled out of a wild river that is now an impounded, oxygen starved slack-water filled with pond scum.
And importantly, I learned that our river was once part of the greatest anadromous/salmonid fishery on planet Earth, who’s native fish population is now less than 1% of what it was (disguised by the EXPENSIVE band-aid of hatcheries). I learned that, contrary to popular belief, anadromous (ocean going) fish did indeed spawn in the upper reaches of the Deschutes watershed. For certain, Pacific Lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) once filled the marshes inundated by Crane Prairie reservoir. This species is the first sacred food of the Indigenous nations of the Mid-Columbia, on both the Oregon and Washington side, and is now on a path to extinction. The Deschutes was once a stronghold for this important fish, and the first blow against them was none other than the 1910 dam that created mirror pond, extirpating this species from the entire watershed upriver from Bend. So please remember, where some see a quaint picture of idyllic western urbanism, others see a process of ongoing colonialism and cultural genocide. Sad, but history is full of facts none-the-less.
At first, this proposal seems to remedy this problem by providing fish passage. Yay!? But let’s be honest. There are very few actual fish to speak of because there is next to no habitat here, and this fact also calls for restoration. And then the North Unit dam is yet one more impasse that needs to be dealt with. So where does this leave us then?
We must consider the life of the Deschutes watershed as a whole and take a longer-term perspective. This issue impacts the surviving Indigenous fishery on the lower Deschutes, and is implicated in broader restoration efforts throughout the entire Columbia Basin. So how is this connected to, and dependent upon, an “Urban Development” scheme?
What does objective science say about water quality if we replace the dam with another impoundment? And then what is the moral action considering the true “historical” aspect of mirror pond accounting for the life of this place prior to 1910? A marginal improvement still falls far short of the mark. And we will still be require to dredge, not even resolving the initial concern. How about State or Federal law? Are we compromising the health of the river to appease the superficial aesthetics of invested capital? If this is true in any way, then shame on all of us.
The light of genuine scrutiny must descend upon this project, and anyone who feels they can “Fly under the radar” should reconsider. Compromising the ecological health of this river is unforgivable, as this will be the measure by which future generations will judge us. I, for one, will not fail them. And it is clear to me that I am in no way alone.
It seems amazing to me that the City and our Parks and Rec Department is trying to redevelop the downtown riverfront, by saying it is for the “health of the river”. If you look at this new plan, they are using the river to push forth development of up to 4 stories along Drake Park and downtown. This is the real issue, hidden in the “let’s fix Mirror Pond”. Doesn’t anyone else see this as a travesty, packaged into something being sold for the better good for Bend? Where do they plan to put another 4 story parking garage once they take out the 2 lots along Mirror Pond. Oh, and how does the City pay for those?