King’s Pond under siege by people dumping garbage, doing drugs

By that time, her husband was opening the gate to their driveway, and Sara Nguyen drove to their house and called the police. The officer stayed on the phone with them for a while, but the people in the car left shortly after the incident, so the police didn’t come out.

The police have been called to come out to Northeast 50th Avenue in the Truman Neighborhood quite a bit, and not just by the Nguyens. Neighbors all over the street say they are fed up with a seemingly constant stream of people visiting the street, some to dump garbage in King’s Pond, and others to park in a darkened portion of the street to have sex or use drugs.

“I’m always telling my husband we should move,” said Sara Nguyen, 30. “I know bad things can happen anywhere, but it’s just so frequent and so obvious here. I worry about what my kids can see. There are people on the street in the middle of the day naked in their car or dealing drugs, not even trying to hide it. Some people leave when you confront them. Others get aggressive.”

Sara and Tuan, 28, have lived on Northeast 50th Avenue for more than five years. It’s the first home they bought after getting married and where they envisioned raising their family. They have three kids, ages 4, 2, and 1 month old.

“My mindset right now is to pay off the house and then move,” Tuan Nguyen said. “We have family who live close by, so that and the community are the things keeping us here.”

Community members around Northeast 50th Avenue make sure to look out for each other. Sara Nguyen said she’s had family come over, and when neighbors see an unfamiliar car heading down the street, they’ve followed the car up her driveway to make sure she’s safe.

The neighbors also try to keep the street and pond clean. Various neighbors have mowed brush along the street and behind the cul-de-sac, and many regularly pick up trash near the pond.

“This place would be a jungle if not for the neighbors,” Sara Nguyen said.

The neighborhood has an agreement with Clark County to have the brush trimmed and cleared once a year, but it needs to be done more frequently, said Dan Wilson, who has lived on the street for 11 years with his wife, Carlyn Whiting. He added that when the brush gets too high, it allows people to sit in the grassy area partially hidden and do whatever it is that they’re doing there. Wilson said he thinks the street needs more lights. For years, there were no streetlights, but after years of complaints and calls to the authorities, the neighborhood association got a streetlight put in at the end of the street in the cul-de-sac.

“It’s this tiny solar-powered light,” he said. “It’s pathetic. It’s like a flashlight. That’s not going to stop anyone from coming down here.”

Wilson said in addition to sketchy street visitors parking and hanging out on 50th, there are plenty of people who stop by simply to dump trash, both on the street and in King’s Pond. He said people have dumped car batteries and tires in the pond, and he even saw someone dump water from an RV into the pond.

Last month, hundreds of fish in King’s Pond died, and were scattered around the shore, floating belly up. With the hot summer and drought, the water level of King’s Pond was lower than anyone on the street, including Ed Barnes, who has lived there for about six decades, said they can remember seeing.

Rhonda Flora doesn’t live on Northeast 50th Avenue, but she grew up near the street and started going to King’s Pond when she was 7. Flora of Orchards said she still visits the pond regularly, and when she saw the hundreds of dead fish, she felt like she had to do something.

She got a two-pronged hot dog poker, gloves and garbage bags and started picking up the fish, some of which had started to decay or had been eaten and were just a pile of bones. She estimated that she picked up between 50 and 60 pounds of dead fish in two days.

Flora, 53, said she also picked up garbage around the pond, including some used condoms, which were tied to and hanging from tree branches. She, and many neighbors, also have seen needles and syringes discarded on the ground on the street.

Flora said that it’s disappointing to see how people treat the area.

“People who live in Vancouver should think of this as a gold mine,” she said. “They don’t. They destroy it.”

She said the area is like a wildlife reserve, with different kinds of ducks, birds, fish and geese all sharing the land. When she was growing up, Flora said she used to visit to play with the ducks, pretend to fish and go out on the frozen pond in the winter.

On a recent Monday, three groups of people stopped by King’s Pond to feed the ducks within 30 minutes of each other, including a mother and her two kids.

“This is why it’s important to preserve this,” Flora said. “This is for generations of families to come to and use.”

Barnes, 82, has visited King’s Pond for quite a while. The former county commissioner has lived on Northeast 50th for about 60 years. He said he goes to the pond nearly every day to feed the wildlife. He buys a 50-pound sack of grain every two weeks to feed to the ducks and geese.

“I’ve got a trunk-full of bread at all times,” he said.

When all of the fish died earlier this year, Barnes said he thought it might have been due to low water levels or possibly because of something dumped in the pond. He said there was a strong wind right afterwards and the smell carried up the street. In his time living on 50th, he said he’s never seen hundreds of fish die like that.

Barnes said dumping and unwanted visitors have increased in the past nine or 10 years, but he isn’t sure why. He used the word “disheartening” multiple times while talking about more recent developments on the street where he’s spent most of his life.

“People don’t feel safe like they used to,” he said. “Our kids used to go down to the pond to play and never had an adult with them. Now, you never see kids down there alone.”

The Nguyens said they don’t want their kids playing outside alone, and they fenced off their property, hung up surveillance cameras and put in a gate to get to their driveway.

“When we first moved here, people were treating our yard like a sidewalk,” Sara Nguyen said. “We have a dock to get out on the pond in our yard, and people would walk on our property with kayaks and rowboats to go out on the pond, which they’re not allowed to do anyway.”

The pond is privately owned by the Nguyens and two other homeowners whose property includes the water. Tuan Nguyen and Wilson put up signs in the pond that it’s private property and people aren’t allowed in it. Even still, people persist. Tuan Nguyen said he had the gate open one time so he could fix it, and someone walked into his yard.

“I confronted him about why he was on my property, and he said because the gate was open,” Nguyen said. “If someone’s front door is open, you wouldn’t just walk in their home.”

Tuan Nguyen said he takes out his cellphone and films whenever he walks down his driveway to get mail. Sara Nguyen said she gets nervous when checking footage from the surveillance cameras they placed all around their property.

“I’m always just holding my breath,” she said. “You never know what you’re going to see.”

The Nguyens said they would like to see some more lights added to the street and maybe more fencing put up, so it’s harder to get to. Barnes said he also thinks more lighting would help solve some of the street’s problems.

“We need one of those lights that can light up the whole area at night,” he said. “People aren’t going to stop their cars to dump something or do whatever if the whole area is lit up.”

Until then, though, the neighbors are going to keep looking out for each other to try and protect a part of Vancouver they all keep close to their hearts.

“I use to always feel safe here,” Flora said. “This was like my secret, safe place. Not anymore.”