Photo: Facebook / County of Grande Prairie

By Shaun Penner

Fishing Pond

Sportsplex fishing pond re-opened after nearly two months

Jul 18, 2019 | 12:28 PM

The fishing pond at the Crosslink County Sportsplex is finally re-opened, after being shut down for nearly two months because of an illegal industrial oil waste dump in a nearby storm drain that seeped into the pond.

The contamination was detected on May 23, which quickly resulted in the closure of the pond and trails to the public.

Manager of Parks and Recreation with the County of Grande Prairie Christine Rawlins says that despite taking longer than hoped to re-open, she is happy the public can once again access it.

“We appreciate the public’s patience. We’ve fielded a lot of different calls and that’s actually been a great indicator of how popular the fishing pond has become in the last year that we have been operating it,” said Rawlins. “We’re very thankful to the public for holding out.”

Rawlins says that it took longer than they would have liked because of the need to meet environmental standards set out by Alberta Environment and Parks, which became tricky at times.

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“Removing the hydrocarbon emulsion from the cattails was actually a very lengthy process. It probably took about six of the eight weeks that the pond was closed,” said Rawlins.

With that, the County will be watching the pond very closely to ensure that water quality stays high and serves no danger to the public or wildlife that access the area.

“We’re certainly going to be monitoring the drainage flow into the pond, to make sure that we are observing any irregularities that might be occurring with the water quality coming into the pond,” said Rawlins. “That will definitely be on the top of our radar going forward, and we will be taking some other precautionary steps to ensure that water quality remains high.”

The Alberta Conservation Association has re-stocked the pond with 2,325 rainbow trout. Though there is an abundance of new fish, the County is changing its policy of “catch and keep” to “catch and release”. New signage around the pond has been placed to remind users.

During the closure as well, the County added a second floating dock to the north shore of the pond.

Alberta Environment and Parks, as well as the County’s Enhanced RCMP unit, are still investigating the illegal dumping of the industrial waste that led to this closure. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Enhanced RCMP unit at 780-532-9727.

The County has also re-schedule the Kids Can Catch event that was originally scheduled for early June. The new date is Sunday, August 11 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Families can register for one-hour time slots free of charge on the County’s website.