LAKEVILLE — Nancy Yeatts, Lakeville’s “Eagle Lady,” landed at the Senior Center on Friday, March 10, and spoke to more than 30 seniors about the history of the town’s Assawompset Pond complex and ways residents can keep it healthy.

Yeatts spearheaded the movement to preserve the 328-acre Assawompset Pond Complex, which includes Assawompset Pond, Long Pond, Pocksha Pond, and Great Quitticas Pond. She earned her “Eagle Lady” nickname from those conservation efforts, which have allowed bald eagles to nest by the ponds.

In 2002, amid what Yeatts called a wave of development in town, Lakeville residents voted at a Town Meeting 303-3 in favor of buying and preserving the pond complex. 

“Lakeville needs to be the example” in terms of preserving nature in Massachusetts, Yeatts said. The Eagle Lady also provided some tips on how residents can keep the town’s natural beauty at soaring levels of health.

The pond complex provides drinking water for 250,000 people in Taunton and New Bedford. Lakeville relies on groundwater, and Yeatts said that’s yet another reason why residents should take care of the local environment.

Yeatts urged the audience to use environmentally-friendly fertilizers for their lawns so the chemicals will not run off and harm the pond and the natural life it supports. 

She added that dumping of leaves into the pond has harmed the water’s nutrient and oxygen levels, and she discouraged attendees from leaving any form of trash at the site.

Yeatts’s future plans involve turning the Betty’s Neck peach barn into an environmental education center. 

“We want to build a classroom in the peach barn to show kids how special what we have here is,” Yeatts said. “Just being here [at this talk] shows you all know how special it is.”

The nature talk by Yeatts was the 11th installment of the Senior Center’s Focus on Lakeville talks, which “just keep getting bigger and bigger,” according to Senior Center chair Deveny Boyadjian.