Verde Village Pond May Become a Park

By Joseph K Giddens  – December 15, 2025 From Cottonwood Journal Extra JournalAZ.com

VVOPA wants to divest the land because it will lose its water supply from the Cottonwood Ditch Association on Saturday, Jan. 1, 2028, due to a policy change restricting non-agricultural use that the ditch associa­tion approved in January 2023

The 10-foot deep pond was originally constructed during the construction of the Unit 4 subdivision and, “was originally established for both fire suppression and as a community attraction,” VVPOA President Aislinn Maldonado wrote to the board. “Features include a tree-shaded walking path, a covered picnic bench and an unpaved parking area that can hold over a dozen vehi­cles. Fish were introduced into the pond years ago to provide a source of food and recreation.”

“As water becomes scarce, ditch associations such as the Cottonwood Ditch that have surface water rights are coming under increased scrutiny for the methods and use of water used for irrigation. Therefore, the Cottonwood ditch board has promulgated policies that focus on the use of water solely for irrigation purposes that foster and protect water users’ water rights.”

Digging a well to supply water for the pond by VVPOA would be expensive — costing up to $100,000 — and legally complex.

“The VVPOA Board has thoroughly explored many options — e.g., securing a new water source, drilling a well, structural repairs, tran­sitioning to a wildlife refuge, agriculture, or a public park — and has determined that the scale of financial, legal, and operational challenges far exceeds the financial and skills capacity of this organi­zation,” Maldonado wrote.

Yavapai County Flood Control District Director Lynn Whitman said she has “concerns with the structural integrity” of the pond, and would also prefer to see the pond be drained, filled in and converted into a dry public park.

“We don’t know if there’s a liner in the pond, and we don’t know the extent of the damage on the backside along the wash,” Maldonado later said. “You can see signs of erosion and pest damage, so the exterior is clearly compromised. When you walk that back area and stomp your foot, you can feel the erosion on the far side, too. A layperson can’t properly assess that [so] we need engineers with the expertise to determine what the wall needs and what it can withstand. Even from a basic construction stand­point, the fact that we’ve been filling it nonstop for 50 years has had an impact, but we don’t know how to quantify it.”

“But there’s a couple of matters that warrant inves­tigation first and [we] need a little bit more research before we can earnestly move in that direction,” Check said. “Part of that includes analyzing the envi­ronmental concerns around the pond.

“It’s not considered like a wildlife preserve, or anything like that. But draining the pond could be one of the hurdles to get over and how would the county go about doing that?”

There is currently not timeline or costs for the acceptance and conversion of the pond, and Check stated that it could make an excellent application for federal support through an application for the administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program, “because it involves a blight and involves [a] low-income community.”

“Verde Villages has … 12,610 [people] living in an unincorporated area adja­cent to Cottonwood, and they’re in desperate need of a community park,” Check said. “So the prospect that this pond would be out of commission and creating a community blight is really a difficulty.”

“Without intervention, the pond will go dry, killing all wildlife that has become dependent upon it, releasing years’ worth of accumu­lated feces and debris, and creating an eyesore and source of contamination sure to impact the many dozens of homeowners who live nearby,” Maldonado wrote.

Yavapai County Man-ager Phil Bourdon said accepting the pond would be more involved than a routine land donation. “This is a little different than a normal donation,” he said. “It’s very complex and would become a multi-year project.”

Yavapai County Development Services has also been working with VVPOA to secure a brown­fields grant.

VVPOA’s process for donating the land to the county is still somewhat undefined but would require a vote by their board of directions rather than by all area residents and or all of its members.

“We are very excited about the prospect of what this future project could bring but we’re cautiously optimistic,” Maldonado later said. “It’s one step at a time from here on out.”