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PacifiCorp has now demonstrated a gift for doing what’s right on Mirror Pond. It just needs to demonstrate a few more gifts. The company announced Tuesday that it would fix one of the leaks in the dam. The leak helped make the pond look and smell about as pleasant as inhaling a noseful of skunk. […]

Dam. No dam. Those are the only two options for Bend’s Mirror Pond. But the community cannot make a decision about the best option without better information about costs and other uncertainties. The water rights issue is muddy. It’s not clear if once the dam is no longer used for power generation, the state would […]

If the leaders trying to find a solution to Mirror Pond had accomplished something more than secrecy and stagnation, two Bend businessmen might not have felt an obligation to step in. Bill Smith, the developer of the Old Mill District, and Todd Taylor, president and CEO of the construction company Taylor Northwest, have signed an […]

The committee that’s trying to decide the future of Bend’s Mirror Pond held a meeting Tuesday that was open to the public. That shouldn’t be an occasion to hand out medals. In this case, it initially felt like it. But then the committee proceeded to renew its efforts to cultivate secrecy. Nobody’s getting a medal […]

We take back what we said about city of Bend officials. It’s not at all clear they have come to their senses about keeping meetings about Mirror Pond’s future open to the public. In fact, they seemed to have looked for a way to keep the public out. Back in July, the Bend City Council […]

Bend city and park officials have come to their senses and decided to let the public in on meetings to decide Mirror Pond’s future. Last week, they had made the outrageous decision to throw up a Great Wall of secrecy around the pond. They changed their minds a day after The Bulletin protested. Now they […]

The art of figuring out what to do with Bend’s Mirror Pond requires answers to specific questions: What does the community want? What is the future of the dam? The process Bend has used so far has discovered neither. It seemed determined to make a rendezvous with a destiny that didn’t include figuring out what […]

If the community wants to preserve Bend’s Mirror Pond, it all comes down to the dam. Will Pacific Power maintain it? If not, is there any way for the community to take it over or otherwise preserve its pond-creating effect? If the answer to both of those questions is no, options to save the pond […]

If more people fill out an unscientific questionnaire, does that make it mean more? Clearly not, which has been the problem from the start with the approach of the Mirror Pond Steering Committee. Now officials are concerned that too few people are filling out the second questionnaire or coming to the latest round of meetings. […]

Central Oregon abounds in pristine river scenes, where water follows natural paths edged by marshy areas and riparian shrubbery. In downtown Bend, though, for decades we’ve had something else: an urban pond, a landscaped place, partly lined with retaining walls and walkways. We’d like to keep it. It’s not that we don’t value the natural, […]