Duck Pond Reborn

After a $300,000 overhaul, a revamped Edgewood Park duck pond is ready to welcome migrating terns, herons, egrets, alewives — and one lucky turtle.

Thanks to a project 20 years in the making, the pond near the corner of Chapel Street and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard has been transformed by a new elevated berm, two footbridges, new paths, a canoe launch and a new flood plain.

It’s part of a $1 million project to restore 80 acres of tidal wetlands in the city. The centerpiece of the plan is the replacement of three ancient one-way gates on the West River with new two-way tidal gates. The new portals will allow water from the sound to flow upstream with the tide, creating a new marshy habitat where dry riverbanks now exist.

The greatest effect will be on the West River Park, where some 80 acres of tidal wetland will be created. It will be the biggest urban tidal marsh restoration in New England, said Gwen Macdonald, director of habitat restoration at Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE), which spearheaded the project using federal economic stimulus funds.

The most public face of the project is Edgewood Park’s duck pond. In a light rain Tuesday morning, Macdonald and John Champion, CFE’s director of finance and administration, led a tour of the pond’s recent improvements — and helped a painted turtle settle into her new home.

A century ago, the West River in New Haven would ebb and flow with the tide from the Sound, Macdonald said. Then in the 1920s the city installed 12 timber tidal gates on the river, where it crosses under Route 1. The gates allow river water to flow out to the Sound but prevent Sound water from flowing back in.

As a result, tidal wetlands dried up and converted to dry riverbanks. Many acres of habitat belonging to migrating birds were destroyed. The gates also prevented migrating fish like the alewife from swimming up the river and spawning in the spring.

The Long Island Sound is surrounded by a ​“mosaic” of different ecosystems. Humans have affected some more than others over the years, Macdonald said.

“Wetlands have suffered hugely,” she said. The Sound has only 20 percent of the wetlands it had in colonial times, she said. ​“This specific ecosystem needs our help more than others.”

The installation of three new self-regulating two-way tidal gates will allow the city to repair some of that damage. When the tide flows back up the West River, it will create new tidal wetlands, even reactivating seeds from tidal wetland plants that have been waiting in the ground since the 1920s, Macdonald said. The gates (pictured, in progress) should be installed by the end of the month.

At the pond, workers created a berm on the north side of the pond, with wide openings for water to flow through. Footbridges — which are still not fully complete — will allow people to walk over the openings.

Twice a day, with the tides, water will flood the area northwest of the pond and then recede back, Macdonald said.

The Connecticut Fund for the Environment is hosting a planting day on June 2, when volunteers can help put tidal marsh plants into the area. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro plans to attend, Champion said.

In the past, the lawn there has often been a slightly swampy anyway. Melting snow tended to make the area mucky in the spring. Now it will be a proper wetland.

Further north, the states Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has been working on control phragmites an invasive plant species. Workers have cut the plants back and sprayed a herbicide that degrades in sunlight so that it poses little risk to other plants or to animals, Macdonald said. Phragmites (pictured) still grow there; the plant management program will take three to five years, she said.

West River Park (pictured) has also succumbed to phragmite infestation. Macdonald said that the influx of salt water may ​“stress the plant” and encourage others to take over.

The work at the duck pond required the removal of three ​“decrepit willows,” Macdonald said. Other trees that ​“like to get their feet wet,” like a pin oak and a sweet gum, are staying.

Two benches will be installed shortly, she said. New paved footpaths have been installed along with a launch area for canoes and kayaks. The parks department plans to use a paved circular area at water’s edge for education programs.

Mikayla Osumah, 11, and her aunt Ingrid Scafe stood near there on Tuesday, wondering what to do with the turtle they’d just found.

Mikayla said they’d come across it that morning on Blake Street. ​“We were about to run over it.”

Mikayla (at right in photo) said she and her aunt asked some people what they should do with it. They were directed to the pond.

The plan had been to let it go. Mikayla was having second thoughts. ​“We might keep it,” she said.

Macdonald (at left in photo above) picked up the specimen She told Mikayla it was a young female painted turtle. She said she could tell it was female by its flat ​“plastron,” the bottom of the shell. The male turtle has a rounded bottom, which helps the male and female to fit together while mating.

The turtle pulled inside her shell as Macdonald pointed out her features. ​“She’s not very pleased with me,” Macdonald said.

She was probably going to lay eggs when you found her, she told Mikayla and Scafe.

That sealed it. They should let the turtle go, Scafe said.

Macdonald recommended putting her in the river nearby.

“She’ll be very happy here,” she said as she and Champion strolled along a footpath at Edgewood Park’s new and improved duck pond.