By Ben Joravsky
By the end of the month she and others were spreading the news that ducks were dying and the Park District was at least partly to blame. “They could have done more to save the ducks,” says Lassila. “They should have done more. If the media hadn’t done stories I don’t know if they would have done anything.”
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Despite the planning, it seems that each phase of the project is greeted with as many jeers as cheers. First there was the matter of the Nature Museum (which the task force had nothing to do with), a slab of concrete and glass that Park District officials insisted on sticking next to the pond.
Then there’s the issue of the carp, which once flourished in the pond. After much debate, the task force agreed that the carp had to be killed no matter how much satisfaction they brought to fishermen. They were bottom feeders that stirred up sediment that muddied the water and killed off the plants that kept the pond from eroding the shoreline. “The murkier the water, the less sun that will get in and the less plants that can grow,” says Cook. “The pond will be stocked with other fish.”
“I came in to work on June 14 and someone had brought in a duck,” says Alice Murtas, a pond regular who works at a north-side animal clinic. “I took one look at the duck and said, ‘My God, it’s Daphne.’ Of course I recognized her. I’ve been feeding her for years. She was in really bad shape. She couldn’t hold up her head.”
She also says the Park District was slow to respond to the outbreak. “They didn’t start pumping in water until Channel Two did its story,” says Lassila. “They were late.”
“That will be the next big issue–I’m already hearing about it,” says Cook. “People see the stakes that are five or six feet high and they’re freaking out. They think there’s going to be this huge fence blocking their view. In fact they’ll trim away the top portion of those stakes. The fence will only be about 42 inches and it will have vertical bars which you can see through.”
