ThisWeek CW 10/23/2014
http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/canalwinchester/news/2014/10/20/deal-with-odnr-restrictions-added-to-use-of-groveports-palm-pond.html
As Groveport officials continue to work through residents’ concerns related to city ponds, a new 10-year agreement with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is aimed at alleviating some of the city’s responsibilities.
Residents brought their concerns to Groveport City Council in June this year. They spoke about how the shoreline of Heritage Park’s Palm Pond had become a muddy mess and about the low stock of fish in the pond that made fishing difficult.
Officials at the time said unstable conditions attributed to weather-related ebbing and flooding, along with overfishing, had led to these problems.
The pond is frequently used by families to teach children how to fish.
The new agreement allows the ODNR to monitor Palm Pond; this includes stocking fish and regulating fishing activities. The agreement also adds language the city council codified this summer regarding the use of the pond, and in particular, normalized the rules for all the city’s bodies of water.
“I was recently contacted by ODNR that our current 10-year agreement with them for Palm Pond expired Sept. 23,” City Administrator Marsha Hall said. “This is a 10-year agreement where we get the ODNR assistance on the work they did with Palm Pond before.
” In addition to the normal conditions of the agreement, they are including the additional restrictions we added as part of Ordinance 14-025.”
Those additional restrictions include:
* Free public fishing and reasonable access will be available from dawn to dusk, instead of at all times.
* Fishing may be done only from the banks, not from boats.
* Everyone age 15 or older must release all fish caught.
* Largemouth bass must be 15 inches or longer to be kept.
* During scheduled stocking of the pond, no more than five fish may be kept.
Council members voted unanimously to waive the second and third readings of the ordinance authorizing the agreement and approve it as an emergency since Groveport’s agreement with ODNR had expired.
The new agreement will be valid from Jan. 1, 2015, through the end of 2024.