Bedford Board Mulls the Future of Todd's Pond

BEDFORD, N.Y. - The man-made Katonah lake known as Todd’s Pond, once a popular recreation site but now barely more than a troubled puddle, could reclaim at least some of its past luster with a million-dollar fix, the Bedford Town Board was told last week.  

The multiphase dredging solution, unveiled at the board’s Oct. 15 meeting, is both less ambitious and far less expensive than others considered and rejected since 2019. In that year, a sustained public outcry over unchecked deterioration in size and water depth of the town-owned pond prompted formation of a committee to seek solutions.

“To try to take this pond back to something that it was 28 years ago is impossible,” Supervisor Ellen Calves said, citing estimated costs as high as $13 million for that kind of extensive restoration. “I’m pretty sure everyone would agree that’s not what taxpayers are going to pay for.”

So, Lou Sorrell, who chairs the Todd’s Pond Advisory Committee, laid out cost options built into the multiple phases of a cleanup approach drawn by Pristine Waters LLC, a Ridgefield, Conn., dredging firm.

After contending with the earlier, far more costly plans, Calves said, “We are thrilled to have a proposal with numbers we can have a conversation about.”

Sorrell, a Lakeside Drive resident, is “old enough to actually remember when there was water in [Todd’s Pond], and you could skate on the pond.” 

Reduced now to a 3-plus-acre splash of water just west of Cherry Street, Todd’s Pond sits between Lakeside Drive on the north and Lily Pond Lane on the south.

Pristine’s plan divides the lake into sections, labeled 1, 2 and 3A/B, from north to south, with 4 standing alone to the west of them. 

“The committee has two recommendations for consideration by the board,” Sorrell said.

“The first one would be to approve or reserve in the budget $1.1 million . . . to cover phases 1, 2 and 4,” he told the lawmakers, saying Phase 3 is “really an area that’s in pretty bad shape right now.”

That would allow work there to be postponed while the town tried “to get the most bang from the buck by cleaning up the areas where we could see the biggest effect.” Everything would depend on getting needed permits from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Sorrell said, a process he described as at least a six-month effort. 

The board took no immediate action on the plan, dismaying some in the crowded town hall. Ken Strnad, a South Pine Street resident, said, “We’ve been at this for five-plus years now. Let’s find a way forward; let’s not sidestep.”

Strnad, addressing the board, insisted that Bedford is contractually obligated under its 1997 purchase agreement to maintain the pond in the same condition that existed at the time. 

Calves disagreed, saying, “Nature is not stagnant. I don’t think anyone would sign a contract saying a parcel should be kept exactly the way that it is because, obviously, lots of things about nature are changing all the time.”

Todd’s Pond had been the property of a Katonah homeowners organization, which sold the man-made basin to the town for $10.

Strnad said legal documents accompanying the sale required Bedford “to maintain the pond in its current [1997] state in perpetuity—period. And now we’re getting this backpedaling.”

Calves, a lawyer, said that provision had been written into the sale agreement to bar the town from making improvements, like fencing the pond property.

At a marathon meeting in June 2019, neighbors described a pond filled in over the years by silt, its size cut from 4½ acres to barely more than 3, its depth reduced from 6 feet or more to inches by incursion of sediment and vegetation. 
Pristine’s managing member, Mark Amler, speaking via Zoom last week, warned, “If we let it keep going the way it’s going, it’s going to be a swamp. That’s the reality of it.”