You could always do what my husband did years ago. I asked him to cut the lower branches of a laburnum at the bottom of the garden in the house we had just moved to. I was very pregnant at the time, and concerned that they were reachable when the baby grew a little.
Well, he certainly removed the lower branches alright......from underneath!
Seriously though, it's worth removing and replacing with a more pondlife-friendly shrub.