The Duck Pond became a grave site to 45 fish that dehydrated during a routine cleaning that went horribly wrong.
On May 20 the UNM Physical Plant Department began its annual operation to clean the sludge from the pipe that maintains the Duck Pond water flow. The water level is lowered to complete the five-day procedure designed to keep the pond clean. On May 22, two days into the process, the water level was so low that the fish and the turtles inside the Duck Pond were above the water level and exposed to dry heat.
“We’ve done it many times before,” said Mary Vosevich, the director of the Physical Plant Department. “The water has never reached that low of a level.”
Vosevich said the department did not clean the Duck Pond last year because of financial issues.
“It costs $10,000 to clean the pond,” she said. “We have to bring in trucks to transport the sludge.”
The excess sludge from not cleaning out the pond last year is the reason why the water level got low enough to kill the fish, Vosevich said.
“A lot of stuff gets thrown into the pond,” she said. “We find cell phones, disk drives, chairs. I have seen someone throw a whole loaf of bread in there.”
Witnesses said they saw fish flap on the concrete floor and suffocate from water deprivation to a slow death.
“The stench was awful, and there were fish visibly dead,” student Calvin Tribby said.
Some tried to take the dying fish home in an effort to save them. However, because the fish are considered UNM property, campus police were ordered to stop anyone attempting to take fish from the Duck Pond, Vosevich said.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” student Kassandra Gonzales said. “These people were trying to save the fish’s lives, but they were stopped. If it is routine, UNM should have had a way to save them.”
Vosevich said no fish had died before during the cleaning.
As a result of the incident, the UNM Physical Plant Department will tentatively monitor the water level in the future, Vosevich said and will also evaluate planting more fish. However, Vosevish said the remaining fish can repopulate the Duck Pond.
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“We apologize for the incident. It was unintentional,” she said.
