Mirror Pond silt fix could cost $18 million

The Mirror Pond Management Committee on Tuesday learned just how much it could cost to dredge the whole pond. It’s one of the options being considered to help clean up the silt that has built up for decades.

There’s also a new estimate of 380,000 cubic yards of silt in the man-made pond that is a Bend icon — and with a cost of $30 to $50 per yard of silt to be removed, it would cost between $10 million and $18 million to remove by dredging.

The other three options to be considered include doing nothing, remove some of the silt – or remove the Pacific Power hydroelectric dam, which would drastically change the pond.

“There is an expense to it, and we are going to move forward,” Jim Figurski, manager for the Mirror Pond project, said Wednesday. “There’s no funding mechanisms in place as of yet, but that’s part of this next process of looking at once we have some clear vision of what we might do, and how, then, would we fund those.”

The committee acknowledges any dredging scenario is expensive.

A consulting team is now creating detailed views of what the end result of the four options would look like.

Those plans will be made to the public some time in early June.