The Donnelly Park pond has a decreased fish population this season due to an overcrowding of dead algae absorbing the oxygen supply.
This is not a new phenomenon for the 40-year-old pond, but the issue is becoming bigger as time passes. 
“This happens every year,” said Dan Madden, Turlock Municipal Service Director. “And as this pond gets shallower, it’s going to be more of a problem.“
Madden explained that over the years, the pond has increased in size and decreased in depth. This results in a warmer pond filled with nitrate from geese droppings that are making a perfect environment for algae to thrive.  
“The algae population gets so dense that the light transmission into the water is reduced, so those algae on the lower end die off,” Madden said. “And when they die, they begin to demand oxygen and the oxygen level plummets.”
To control the problem, the city is pulling out the dead fish to decrease the smell, and adding portable water to the pond while taking the bad water out. Madden hopes in the future that they can control the problem even more by stopping the pond from growing. 
“As moneys become available, we are looking to try and find some grants to do some major rehabilitation work on that pond where we will do something to control the erosion on the banks and also make it deeper,” Madden said. “But those are only plans. I don’t have four million bucks lying around.” 
Park strollers are noticing the issue (and the smell) as well. 
“We just moved out here last month, and we thought it was a nice park until we started walking around and smelled a nasty smell,” said Vista Kong, a local resident who visits the park at least five times a week. “And we saw three or four dead fish.”
The issue is slowly decreasing as Autumn begins, and cooler weather drops the temperature of the pond water back to a stable living environment for the algae and fish. Madden even joked that next year it will not be as big of an issue because there will be fewer fish.