The water Clinton
A detention basin at the low corner of a city that measures a fifth of an acre of water in total
The Clinton pond, and the mile of pipe that keeps it full.
The city's own facility record says it plainly: this pond was built to act as a detention pond for storm water, it is fed by land drainage and by piping that collects artesian well water and ground water from the other side of 2000 West all the way across town, and the city installed an aeration system after it was built and has since replaced the diffusers. It treats the water at least annually, the Davis County Health Department samples it, and the Census measures 729 square metres of water in the entire city. This is what that adds up to.
Clinton is at the top corner of Davis County, four hours and a mountain range from the ground I actually work, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read where it is issued: the city's own facility records, history page, secondary water page, special events calendar and fire department pages at clintoncity.net, including its published insurance classification and the four orienteering course documents it hosts; the Utah State Historical Society's account of the town; the state roads layer and the municipal boundary layer at the Utah Geospatial Resource Center; the United States Census geocoder; and the Division of Wildlife Resources community fisheries list. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
The live question
Is the Clinton pond a pond, and what exactly is the city doing to it?
It is a storm detention basin that the city fills through a pipe, stocks, aerates, treats and has tested, and the city says so itself in six numbered paragraphs. From its own facility record, checked in August 2026: the city has collected all the land drain water possible to feed into the pond, it has piping that collects flowing artesian well water and ground water from the other side of 2000 West all the way to the pond, and this pond was built to act as a detention pond for storm water as well. That is the whole answer to the first question, in the issuing body's own words.
The scale of that is easy to miss. 2000 West is SR-108, and the pond is at 2850 or 3000 West depending on which agency you ask, so the feed runs roughly a mile across the city in a pipe, gathering artesian and ground water on the way. And the Census measures 729 square metres of water inside the entire municipal boundary, which is about a fifth of an acre. A city with essentially no natural water in it built a basin at the low corner of its own slope and then filled it deliberately.
The second half of the question has a longer answer and it is unusually candid civic prose. The city installed an aeration system after the pond was constructed and has more recently replaced the diffusers to spread the oxygen better. It treats the pond chemically at least annually for plant and algae growth, and says plainly that before it started doing so the crews battled weeds and algae that were harmful to the fish and made the pond unpleasant. It works with the Davis County Health Department, which samples the water regularly. And it records, without being asked, an episode in which ducks at the pond died and tested positive for avian botulism.
The basin, in numbers
729
square metres of water in the whole city, per the Census
2,900 ft
of walking path around it, on the city's own measurement
150 ft
between the two addresses two agencies publish for it
6
numbered points in the city's own statement about it
The record
Two agencies, two names, two addresses, and a hundred and fifty feet of disagreement between them.
This is not a page about a pond so much as a page about a piece of municipal infrastructure that has fish in it. Here is what each body publishes, checked in August 2026, with the differences named rather than averaged. Where only one of them says something, that is said too.
| Clinton City | The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources | What it means on the ground | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The name | Pond Park for the park, and Clinton Pond for the water, in its own body text | Clinton Park Pond, on the community fisheries list | Two agencies, two names, and a third and fourth are in circulation elsewhere. Naming it inside a Clinton page means using the city's |
| The address | 2850 West 2415 North, Clinton, Utah 84015 | 3000 West 2415 North, Clinton, Utah 84015 | Same street, about 150 feet apart. Either will get you there and neither is wrong, which is worth knowing before you trust a pin |
| What it is | A detention pond for storm water, built as one, fed by piped land drain, artesian well and ground water from the far side of 2000 West | Not stated; the listing carries the address and a link to the fishing application | The city is describing infrastructure. The state is describing a place you can fish. Both are true and only one of them is on any listing site |
| The features | Fishing, and wildlife and waterfowl watching. Those are the only two amenities on the record | A community fishing water, with a volunteer contact given as the city recreation department | No playground, no pavilion, no restroom, no dog provision and no boating rule is published by the city for this site at all |
| The management | An aeration system installed after construction, diffusers since replaced, chemical treatment at least annually for plants and algae | Not published on the fisheries list | Everything about the water chemistry here is the city's doing and the city's account |
| The testing | The Davis County Health Department samples the water regularly, and in some years the pond has been posted for E. coli with residents advised about getting in | Not published on the fisheries list | The county health department is the body to ask about current status, not the city and not this page |
| The birds | City crews check the pond every working day in season for dead ducks; the birds are the responsibility of the federal wildlife service under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 | Publishes the state's own avian botulism guidance, which the city quotes and links | This is the only Davis County pond whose managing city writes about its bird mortality in public |
| The rules | No hours, no dog rule, no boating rule and no fee published for this site anywhere in the facility system | Community water rules and licensing sit in the current Utah Fishing Guidebook rather than on the list | The guidebook is the authority for anything to do with fishing here. This page prints no species and no limit |
Clinton City's account is quoted from its own Pond Park facility record and the Division of Wildlife Resources listing from its community fisheries page, both checked in August 2026. The Census water area figure for the city is from the Bureau's own area measurement. The community fisheries listing served an address and a link and no species, limit or licence detail, and the wildlife division's fishing application offered no page for the water itself, so none of that is printed here. The county lakeside parks topic on this site carries the pond alongside every other walkable water edge in Davis County and is the place for the comparison.
The details
Getting there
From City Hall the run is north to 2300 North, west past the recreation building and out across 2000 West, which is SR-108, then north again on the 2850 or 3000 West alignment to 2415 North. The basin is at the far northwest corner of the city, close to both the Weber County line to the north and the West Point boundary to the west, and it is the lowest ground in the municipality. The piped feed the city describes starts on the far side of the state highway you crossed to get there.
Before you go
- This is managed water and the city says so. It is aerated, treated at least annually and sampled by the county health department, and none of that is a claim about whether it is safe on any given day.
- Anything about species, daily limits, licences or age exemptions belongs to the current Utah Fishing Guidebook. No species list and no limit appears anywhere on this page.
- The city publishes no dog rule, no boating rule and no hours for this site. Rules that circulate on aggregator listings were not verified at the city and a call to 801-614-0780 settles them.
- In late summer, if there are dead birds on the bank, the city already knows the pattern and its crews check every working day in season. Report it and keep away from them.
The pipe
A mile of piped artesian water to fill the only body of water in the city.
Read the city's first numbered paragraph slowly, because it is doing something unusual for a municipal web page: it is explaining an engineering decision to residents who did not ask. The city has collected all of the land drain water possible to feed into the pond. It has piping that collects flowing artesian well water and ground water from the other side of 2000 West all the way to the pond. And the pond was built to act as a detention pond for storm water as well.
Three separate water sources, then, in one basin: land drainage collected across the city, artesian and ground water gathered from east of a state highway and piped roughly a mile west, and storm runoff, which was the original purpose. That is not a natural feature that somebody stocked. It is a piece of drainage infrastructure that a city decided to keep full on purpose, and the reason it can be kept full is the same reason it is where it is.
The geography underneath it is the part nobody writes down. The federal geographic names records put the Clinton City Cemetery at 4,478 feet in the southeast corner of the city and West Clinton Elementary School at 4,298 feet on the west side. The city falls about 180 feet from one end to the other, from southeast to northwest, which is what an old lakebed does, and the water goes the same way the ground does. So the basin sits at the low corner, which is where a detention basin belongs, and the feed comes downhill to it from the higher, older half of town. The founding page has the same slope doing a different job.
And the scale is genuinely startling once the Census figure is set beside it. The Bureau measures 729 square metres of water inside the whole municipal boundary, about a fifth of an acre, against 15,368,084 square metres of land. This basin is essentially all of it. A city with a state listed community fishery and almost no natural water at all is a real, checkable, non obvious fact, and the pipe is the explanation. Everything else about the county's water edges, pond by pond, is on the county page, which carries this one alongside all the others.
Three water sources, a mile of pipe, an aeration system and an annual chemical treatment, to keep a fifth of an acre of water in a city that has no other.
The birds
The city wrote down what happened to the ducks and then published the state's explanation next to it.
Most municipalities would not have published this at all. Clinton's facility record opens by saying it understands people's concern about the pond and the ducks and here is some information on the steps it has taken, and then sets out what happened. On the twenty fifth of August, in a year the statement does not give, the city informed the Davis County Health Department of dying ducks. The department tested the water for harmful algae blooms and those tests came back negative. It also collected a few ducks for the Division of Wildlife Resources to be tested for botulism, the samples went to Logan, and they came back positive for avian botulism.
The city then does something better than most public statements manage: it quotes the state rather than characterising it. The wildlife division's own guidance, which the city links, says that avian botulism occurs almost yearly in Utah and can result in extensive losses, typically between July and September, that major waterfowl outbreaks in Utah have occurred at the Great Salt Lake, and that the bacterium lives naturally in soils and becomes toxic in adverse conditions such as heat. The city adds that other ponds in the area have seen outbreaks too and that it is not the first to see the effects.
Two cautions about that passage. The loss figure the city quotes belongs to a Great Salt Lake outbreak in 1997 and is the state's statement about the lake, not about this basin, and it should never be attached to this water. And the statement carries no year anywhere in it. On the twenty fifth of August, with no year, and the line about the pond not being posted for E. coli in a year it calls this year, are both undated. So this page prints no year for the episode and does not use the phrase this year in any form, and neither should anybody else reading the same page.
The last paragraph of the city's statement is the one that puts the whole thing in proportion. Crews are out every working day checking the pond for dead ducks or other problems, which the city notes is one of the only ways to manage a botulism outbreak. The birds themselves are the responsibility of the federal wildlife service and are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. And the two problems the city names as its own are people feeding the ducks unhealthy food and people leaving domesticated ducks there. That is a city describing a management problem honestly, and it is the reason this page exists.
Nothing on this page says the water is safe and nothing says it is unsafe, and the body that actually measures it is not the city. What is on the record is that the Davis County Health Department samples the pond regularly, that the city states some years it has been posted for E. coli with residents advised about getting in the water, and that the city describes the water as clear with samples coming back good in an undated passage. All of that is the city's own account and it is written to reassure. The correct place to ask about current status is the Davis County Health Department, and the correct place for anything about fishing rules, species, limits or licences is the current Utah Fishing Guidebook, neither of which is this page. The city also publishes no hours, no dog rule and no boating rule for this site; rules to that effect circulate on third party listings and were not verified at the city, and 801-614-0780 settles them in one call.
Living with it
A flat half mile of path around the only water for miles, at the low end of town.
The everyday version of all this is straightforward. There is a flat loop of 2,900 feet, which the city measures at 0.55 of a mile, around a small managed basin at the far northwest corner of the city, with fishing and waterfowl watching as its two published amenities and nothing else. No playground, no pavilion, no restroom and no published hours. It is a walk and a fishing spot, it is free, and it takes about forty five minutes at an ordinary pace.
For a household weighing an address in the northwest quadrant, the pond is a genuine amenity and it comes with a season. The city's own account makes clear that late summer is when the management effort concentrates: chemical treatment for algae, daily checks for dead birds between roughly July and September, and the possibility in some years of a posting about the water. None of that makes it a bad neighbour and all of it is worth knowing before somebody is surprised by a sign.
The other practical point is that this water is the reason the county topic mentions Clinton at all. There is no lake frontage here, no canyon, no river and no wetland inside the boundary; the west edge of the city is West Point and the north edge is Weber County. So the pond is the whole of this city's stake in the county's water, and the lakeside parks page is where it sits alongside every other walk to water in Davis County with the comparisons and the rules.
And it is worth ending on what the pond is rather than what it looks like. It is drainage infrastructure that a city chose to make useful, filled by a mile of pipe from the far side of a state highway, aerated by machinery the city has upgraded, treated annually, sampled by a county department and watched daily in the season when the birds are at risk. That is a lot of deliberate effort for a fifth of an acre of water. The mover page carries the rest of what an address here asks for.
The county's water
The lakeside parks
The county's water edges taken one at a time, with what each managing body publishes.
Read the guideThe other loops
The Rail Trail and the Canal
Seven measured walking loops, two named trails, and the canal thread that runs back to 1884.
Read the guideThe odd one
The Orienteering Course
Nine markers set in concrete, six routes and four documents, in a neighbourhood park.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Clinton
Two water bills from two organisations, and only one of them is the city's.
The mover pageThe practical side
The Clinton city guide
The half of an address that carries figures, and the live listings that go with them.
Open the guideThe wider county
Davis County on The Local
Fifteen towns along one run of the valley, and the seven subjects written once for all of them.
The region hubKeep reading
The rest of Clinton on The Local.
The founding
The Summit That Became Clinton
Four working names, a ward in 1896, a railroad split in 1916, ninety years in August.
Read the guideThe address
Whose Address Is This
All 1,264 road segments carry another city's grid, another city's ZIP, another post.
Read the guideThe big week
Six Days in June
Six days, five venues, and a free swim night the city has to hold in another county.
Read the guideThe compass
The Orienteering Course
Nine markers set in concrete, six courses, four documents, and a compass bearing to start.
Read the guideThe paths
The Rail Trail and the Canal
Two named trails, seven measured loops, and an 1884 canal that still bills separately.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Clinton
Two water bills, two state routes, no freeway inside the line, one street of offices.
Read the guideThe companion
Clinton, in full
Ninety years old, on a neighbour's street grid, with its founding farm in the next town.
Read the pageQuick answers
The pond, answered.
At the far northwest corner of the city, and two agencies give two addresses about 150 feet apart. Clinton City publishes it as Pond Park at 2850 West 2415 North, Clinton, Utah 84015, on its own facility record. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources lists the same water as Clinton Park Pond at 3000 West 2415 North on its community fisheries page. Both were checked in August 2026 and neither is wrong; they are the same street and the same water. The practical city guide on this site calls it Clinton City Pond, which is a fourth name for one place.
No, and the city says so in its own words. Its facility record states that the pond was built to act as a detention pond for storm water as well, that the city has collected all of the land drain water possible to feed into it, and that it has piping which collects flowing artesian well water and ground water from the other side of 2000 West all the way to the pond. That is roughly a mile of pipe across the city. The Census measures 729 square metres of water inside the whole municipal boundary, about a fifth of an acre, which is essentially just this basin.
Four things, all published on its own facility record. It installed an aeration system after the pond was constructed to introduce oxygen into the water, and has more recently replaced the diffusers to distribute that oxygen better. It treats the pond chemically at least annually for plant and algae growth, and states that before it started doing so crews battled weeds and algae that harmed the fish and made the pond unpleasant. It works with the Davis County Health Department, which samples the water regularly. And in the season when birds are at risk, city crews check the pond every working day.
That is not a question any page should answer, including this one. What is on the record is that the Davis County Health Department samples the pond regularly, that the city states some years it has been posted for E. coli with residents advised about getting in the water, and that in an undated passage the city describes the water as clear with samples coming back good. All of that is the city's own account, written to reassure. The body that measures it is the county health department, and current status is theirs to give rather than anybody else's.
The city published the account itself. On the twenty fifth of August, in a year its statement does not give, it informed the Davis County Health Department of dying ducks. Tests for harmful algae blooms came back negative. Ducks were collected for the Division of Wildlife Resources, sent to Logan, and came back positive for avian botulism. The city quotes the state's own guidance that avian botulism occurs almost yearly in Utah between roughly July and September and that the bacterium lives naturally in soils. City crews check for dead birds every working day in season, which the state says is one of the only ways to manage an outbreak.
This page does not print a species list or a daily limit, and the reason is worth stating. The Division of Wildlife Resources lists the water as a Utah community fishery on its community fisheries page, and that listing served an address and a link and nothing else when it was checked in August 2026; the division's fishing application offered no page for the water itself. The current Utah Fishing Guidebook and the division's stocking report are the authorities for species, daily limits, licences and age rules, and they change annually. The practical city guide on this site prints three species and a limit that the published listing does not confirm.
Yes, and the city measures the path. Its facilities page publishes seven walking and exercise loops with lengths, and the Pond Park loop is 2,900 feet, which the city gives as 0.55 of a mile. That is the second longest of the seven, after the 6,100 foot loop at the Civic Center. It is flat, like everything else in this city, and it takes about forty five minutes at an unhurried pace. The city publishes no opening or closing time for this or any other park, so no hours appear here.
The city publishes no dog rule for this site, and its two documents on the subject do not agree with each other. The facilities page states that city ordinance allows dogs on the walking paths at two parks, Power Line and Civic Center, on the paths only and not on the park itself. The ordinance excerpt that the same page links names three places rather than two: the Clinton City Creek walkway, the Powerline Park walkway and the Rail Trail. Pond Park is not on either list. A call to the recreation department on 801-614-0780 is the way to settle it.
Because it built one. The Census measures 15,368,084 square metres of land in the city and 729 square metres of water, which is about a fifth of an acre in a municipality of 23,386 people. There is no lake frontage, no river and no wetland inside the boundary. What there is instead is an old lakebed that falls about 180 feet from the cemetery corner in the southeast to the west end of town, a detention basin built at the low corner of that slope, and a mile of pipe bringing land drainage, artesian water and ground water to it from the far side of a state highway.
A fifth of an acre of water and a great deal of deliberate effort behind it.
The pond is the clearest single illustration of what this city is. There is no natural water here, no canyon and no lake edge, so the city took a piece of storm drainage at the low corner of its own slope, ran a mile of pipe to it, put in aeration, replaced the diffusers when they were not spreading oxygen well enough, treats it annually, has the county sample it and sends crews out daily in the season when the birds are at risk. If a northwest quadrant address is on your list, walk the 2,900 foot loop once in spring and once in late August and you will understand the place. Tell me what you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who works this corner, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.