Green Pond Saves Slow News Week

There was a time when giving directions to someone from out of the area might involve telling them to turn left at the green pond. So odd was the color of East Hampton’s Town Pond that it could not be mistaken for anyplace else. When it turned suddenly bright green, the shade of perhaps grass seedlings, early Saturday, having bloomed into an unearthly hue overnight, police were called. A report appeared on the Internet. Hypotheses were hatched. It was, in a slow news week, the biggest thing that happened on the South Fork, unless you consider Justin Beiber’s visit to a Southampton surf shop more noteworthy.

    From where we sit, the fuss seems all too much. The pond has been green before, though the causes are slightly less than natural. Though East Hampton Village has adopted organic methods for the grassed areas that surround the pond, homeowners in its modest drainage basin have not necessarily followed suit. Our suspicion that the right combination of temperature, nutrients in the form of super-powered lawn care products, and just enough rain combined to produce a vigorous algae bloom. As the days passed, some of the algae died, and the chartreuse tone was muted.

    Accurate or not, the algae bloom is our story and we are sticking with it. However, we cannot begrudge others their runs to perhaps more entertaining explanations, such as one man who posted online his one-word explanation: pesto.