Comment by Nobhill Resident on May 24, 2010 at 6:21am

Farmer's Market

Will this only be used only downtown or for all the weekly markets in Albuquerque?

Comment by Adelita on May 24, 2010 at 6:29am

Nobhill Resident, the article didn't say and I couldn't find any other information about the other grower's markets. I am hoping that if is successful downtown, others will follow suit.

Comment by Adelita on May 24, 2010 at 6:47am

Brian, I was going to include that in my morning fix, but someone posted a discussion about it last night.

Comment by Granjero on May 24, 2010 at 9:21am

Solution for the Duck Pond thingy: Kill the ducks and the fish and have a barbecue for the homeless human beings wandering about out there without ponds of their own.... seriously, I kill fish every time I go to the lake.. if I'm lucky... geez..priorities are all out of whack around here, que no?

Republican crap: I don't like either one of em. Martinez reminds me of an old teacher I used to have in 5th grade and Weh reminds me of a foreman from one of my first jobs at 16 laying pipe in Texas. Says all the right things when the important folks are around then kicks ya in the ass after there gone. Both of em are just too fake for me.

Civil War Relic: Coolness.

What else....? eh, guess I'm done ranting. Carry on.

Comment by Benson on May 24, 2010 at 10:50am

@g.Tortuga the Duck Pond's water level is still low, I just walked by on my way back to the office and it's still below where it should be. The sludge removal should start either this afternoon or tomorrow morning and we'll start completely refilling the pond after that.

Benson

Comment by Mi3ke on May 24, 2010 at 2:34pm

I talked with UNM PR on Saturday about the issue. KOAT just didn't try hard enough. UNM said they didn't stock the pond with anything and therefore don't believe they are responsible for the upkeep of said fishes and turtles. Makes sense to me. How about foisting the responsibility on the people who dumped them in the pond to begin with.

Cheers, Mi3ke

Comment by Nnett on May 24, 2010 at 4:53pm

But there have been fish in the duckpond for years. If UNM drains the pond to clean it every year, like they say they do, why is this the first time we are hearing about something like this happening? Clearly someone has assumed responsibility for these animals in the past. What changed this year?

Comment by Benson on May 24, 2010 at 9:30pm

@Nnett, but usually there is a lot less sludge in the Duck Pond. From what I've picked up so far today, since the Duck Pond hadn't been cleaned for a few years there was a lot more sludge than usual and when the employees started to drain the Duck Pond the water got shallower much faster than expected. They usually try to leave a certain level of water in the pond to provide for whatever marine life might have found its way into the pond, but with the excess sludge it turned out to be a problem and when they returned to check on the pond they found out what was happening and started trying to refill the pond to a little higher level. I don't think (and please bear in mind this is just my opinion) that it's feasible currently to try and catch all of the fish in the Duck Pond, find a place to transport them to, store the fish there for a week and bring them back to the pond - in part because nobody knows how many fish are in the pond, due to people dumping their own fish at the pond.

And (again picked this up around the office because this was before my time here) the university did hear a little bit about this the last time it happened. However the concern appeared to be about the ducks that time, because many of the undomesticated ducks flew away and people were upset that the ducks were scared away.

Since the Duck Pond isn't a naturally occurring body of water, and because there are no streams that feed into it, it needs to be cleaned periodically because of the accumulation of sludge, garbage and food that people throw into the pond starts to accumulate and interfere with the filters, which in turn can impact not only the fish but the ducks and other marine life that might find its way into the pond.

Benson

Comment by mombat on May 25, 2010 at 10:26am

It seems like UNM could send a press release saying that they are going to drain the pond and them people who want to help could show and rescue fish and turtles. It would not be that hard and UNM could use some publicity right about now.

Comment by Benson on May 25, 2010 at 11:04pm

That's a great idea mombat, there was a miscommunication between our departments in this instance. Unfortunately we didn't receive the information about the Duck Pond draining this year. However in order to keep the sludge from building up too much the pond will be cleaned and drained yearly instead of waiting for a couple of years.

And your idea about having people show up is a great one! We should do something like that next year, make it a day and have the people interested in the marine life of the Duck Pond show up for part of a day, maybe have some kind of pot luck picnic or something. Send me an email (bhendrix@unm.edu) if anyone here is interested in something like this, thanks!

Benson

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