Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader
Slave Lake’s town council has $500,000 in the 2022 budget for a new spray park (sometimes called splash park). It was a capital item mentioned in a story on the 2022 budget which appeared in the April 13 Leader.
One week later, at council’s April 12 meeting, council was asked to settle a couple of details.
Two basic options were on the table:
- A refurbishment of the existing spray park in Schurter Park in the northeast part of town.
- Make a brand new one in Hilda Eben Park in the southeast.
The upgrade of the existing park might have been the initial, sentimental choice. But after council heard about the complicating factors, the other location started looking more attractive.
For starters, running treated water straight into the creek is against the rules. As council heard from town project manager Kush Patel, the chloramines in the water are the wild card; provincial rules say they have to be deactivated or allowed to settle. The town has been dealing with the run-off from the existing spray park by putting dichlorination ‘pucks’ in the outflow basin. That does the trick, but the new facility would be so much bigger, with so much more water running off, that strategy would become problematic.
Another option there would be to tie in the spray park to the nearby sewer line. That would be quite costly, Patel told council, due to the park being well below street level. It would call for the installation of a lift station. This could add $300,000 to the project cost.
Putting the new spray park at Hilda Eben Park would be simpler and less expensive, council heard. Tying into the adjacent sewer line would add from $150,000 to $300,000 to the cost, depending on where in the park it was located. The least expensive option would be to put it next to 6th St. SE, more or less where the old skateboard park is. It would have the advantage of being next to the parking lot.
So that’s what council chose, notwithstanding some reservations about safety.
With the money already allocated in the budget, the project should be able to proceed this year. However, the best-case scenario would have it not operational until the 2023 season.
Washroom?
A related discussion was about whether to install public washrooms near the new spray park. Councillor Kimberly Hughes spoke up strongly in favour of this. Mayor Tyler Warman not so much.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “Unless we have somebody looking after it.”
If our main concern is safety, Warman continued, public washrooms might not be the best idea, due to the kind of things people get up to (he didn’t specify) when they know nobody can see them. Warman also cited the high cost of proper washrooms (meaning among other things that they can’t be knocked over) as a reason not to do it.
“We have a tough enough time keeping picnic tables, benches and garbage cans in open spaces,” he said.
However, council passed a motion directing administration to bring back a report on the possibilities.
Councillor Shawn Gramlich supported the idea.
“If we say ‘no’ because there are bad people, we’d never do anything,” he said.
