Care and Repair Needed for Golden Pond

Golden Pond in Crocheron is the jewel of Bayside. Sitting at the end of 35th Ave, the pond provides natural areas landscape, wildlife viewing, and fishing areas. Friends of Crocheron has been advocating for a Natural Areas Restoration of the pond before it was decimated by Ida in September 2021. Local journalist Katherine Donlevy wrote Ida ‘mudslide’ into pond piques concern about the incident and interviewed Dana Gumb, who is a volunteer of Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park along with the Chief of the Staten Island Bluebelt, a large water project in Staten Island to manage flooding. Dana is quoted as saying:

“The mudslide situation is a dramatic instance where you have material lowering the depth, making the pond more shallow. The pond water heats faster [when it’s shallower]. The sunlight penetrates the full depth of the pond. The warmer the water, the less oxygen, so the less marine life can survive there, and there’s less food for wading birds ... You’re talking about a whole ecosystem that’s being degraded by it being filled with sediment.”

In the summer of 2025, Emilia, a local GS, chose to do her Silver Award to study and help clean up damage from Ida. Her work found that the debris from the mudslide and retaining wall had lowered the depth of the pond and had raised the water temperature. These changes to Golden Pond disrupt what Prudue University, More than just a puddle, (2021) calls the "balance between nutrients, plant growth, fish populations, water chemistry, sedimentation and other factors must be maintained to maximize the health and utility of a pond."

Citizen Scientist Research, Summer '25

More Debris Has Caused the Lower Water Level

We can estimate that 22.2 cubic yards of gravel with a backfill, with a weight of 50,418 pounds, emptied into the pond, essentially the force of water from north of the pond, from drain  and low point on Corbett Ave. At an estimated 40 feet wide and 15 feet high, the 600 square foot wall spewed the sand, gravel, rebar, piping, and mess from the backyard shed that also collapsed into the park. Calculations made using two different construction calculators, omnicalculator.com and inchcalculator.com.

All of that material emptied then into the park, much of it then entering into the pond. This resulted in an extraordinary reduction in depth of the pond, along with literally tons of man-made unnatural material now in settled at the bottom of the pond. Material left in the park continues to fill Golden Pond due to ongoing erosion from rain/snow.

Bottom of a Funnel

When it rains or snow melts, water travels across the ground's surface and reaches a body of water, like a lake, river, or the ocean. Surface runoff occurs when water is unable to penetrate the ground due to cement, over saturation, or even undersaturation (like during droughts). It is most visible during heavy rain events. It is a usual occurance in urban areas where manmade surfaces reduce water's ability to saturate the land and it pools into puddles, or rushes down catch basins.

In March 2026, Community Board 11 hosted Rafael CP Santo, who is in the Master of Urban Planning program at CUNY Hunter College. His presentation, Problematic Flood Zone Locations in CD11Q, is part of the NYC Community Planning Fellowship 2025-2026. While Rafael's work focuses on protecting homes and businesses, not measuring damage to green spaces, the work can also be used to push for environmental justice to protect our pond. The pond is shown to be at one of the lowest water levels along with having a greater risk of flooding, even flooding into the Cross Island Parkway.

The following map of catch basins shows why water rushed into the park, along with topography of the area, the lack of catch basins in the neighborhood to the west and clearly too few catch basins in the area to the south. Similarly, there are not enough rain gardens to collect water as well, shown in the second graphic of green infrastructure, showing that about three quarters of CD11Q does not any green infrastructure project. In his conclusion, Rafael states that this is a gap in services should be addressed to better serve the district.

What Makes a Pond Ecosystem Healthy?

Golden Pond is a kettle pond, formed from the remnants of the glacier, fed by streams and groundwater. It is part of our critical environmental infrastructure. It collects and stores rain water from man-made drains, through natural springs, and overflow from heavy rains. It is also connects to Little Neck Bay through a weir at its eastern end.

While Golden Pond is surrounded by unnatural things like roads and cement backyards, it has extensive wildlife that supports migrating birds, fish, turtles, frogs, and various pollinator insects. Plant life around the pond includes jewelweed, cattails, water lilies, and a weeping willow. Unfortunately, fishermen have said that the carp in the pond kick up sediment on the bottom of the pond, lifting up silt particles to create a muddy pond. This reduces the sunlight that can penetrate the layers of the pond, as ponds with low water quality may not have any plants living in it at all. This is the 'muddy puddle' syndrome which Dana spoke about in 2021. Below is an example of a healthy pond.

According to Purdue University, "to promote healthy fish populations, 15-20% of a pond should contain submersed vegetation." The extremely shallow depth in Golden Pond means that the water will be warm, with less or no cooler space for plants and wildlife. Without deeper water for fish, amphibian, and insect habitat, there is not really any place  to provide refuge from cold temperatures in the winter. The below figure from USDA Chapter 11 Ponds and Reservoirs shows "the recommended minimum depth of water for ponds if seepage and evaporation losses are normal." These depths allow the pond ecosystem to function properly, as "fish need areas 2 to 6 feet deep for feeding and nesting."

Stewarding for Next Generation

The failed retaining wall is the area where the most erosioin has occured, leading to extensive debris to enter the pond. This area is shown here in  1934 with a depth of 7 feet, which was largely unchanged in the 1969 records that Emi used, thanks to the Bayside Historical Society's archive. It is now 6 inches at its lowest.

Other Types of Kettle Ponds - LI Coastal Plain Ponds

Long Island's Coastal Plain Ponds: A Unique Ecosystem Under Threat. Long Island Natural History Conference. YouTube.

Bayside Flooding Town Hall

Date: March 23, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Location: Redeemer Lutheran Church Gymnasium

Jessica Burke – Founding President, Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park

A Bayside resident since 1989, Jessica Burke attended PS 41, where she developed an early interest in environmental sciences. She was especially influenced by Mrs. Cilmi, whose demonstration - carefully slicing an apple to illustrate the fragility and scarcity of Earth’s resources - left a lasting impression.

In the summer of 2020, Jessica founded Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park to help clean up and restore this local treasure. She also created a historical archive to connect the community through their shared cultural heritage. Since then, Jessica has used the organization as a platform to advocate for increased city funding for parks while opposing the allocation of public funds to private organizations that manage parklands without the same transparency required of NYC Parks. She has provided testimony before the City Council in support of these efforts. Jessica holds an M.A. from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is the author of When the Well Runs Dry: Ethics and the Privatization of Water, a work that deepened her commitment to preserving public resources, including her local park.