Peggy Revell
It looks like Emo residents will have to wait until next summer for a new spray park, as delays have pushed the project’s completion date back to colder months.
“It will basically be finished this year,” said spray park committee chair Lincoln Dunn. “But it won’t be commissioned obviously until next summer because there won’t be a need for it.
“Unless our summer’s just been pushed back by a month, as it appears to be,” he laughed. “Maybe we’ll have 30 degree weather in September and we will be able to commission it!”
Currently, they’re hoping to be breaking ground shortly—in the next week to ten days, he said, and expect the installation to be completed in mid-September.
Delays stemmed from back in May when the committee was informed that there were going to be some capacity issues with the water treatment system in Emo, Dunn explained.
“We had to sort of scramble to look at some changes in water source and water treatment for the park itself,” he said. “It was something that we had thought was not going to be an issue that turned out to be an issue. So we were required at that point to look at and implement a stand-alone water treatment system for the park itself.”
“It’s one of those sort of good new/bad news kind of thing. It’s bad news because we wanted to have it ready for the summer,” he said, adding that the good news comes because they were able to “rethink and relook” at the project, and it gave them a chance to become more like environmental stewards.
“The other system would have required more wastewater to go back into the system in Emo,” he said of the original plan. “This [new] water treatment system—because it’s standalone—the water is essentially recycled through the system, and it’s only whatever is lost has to be topped up. So there’s very little waste, basically is what the result is.”
“It sucks because we’re not going to have a park this year, but the upside is that we’ve got a better system as a result,” he said.
Alongside the delay, this change also meant an increase to the original project cost, he explained, with new water treatment system—which requires erecting a small building to contain the system in—adding another $40,000 in costs.
“Mostly .. it resulted in additional engineering costs,” Dunn noted. “We had anticipated our engineering costs were going to be around $3,000. Well as a result of this it’s going to be more like $10,000.
“And of course, unfortunately engineering takes time as well and that’s been probably been the biggest slowdown,” he said about how the delays continued. “Because we live in a rural community the engineers who have expertise with systems like this, they’re not around here.
“So we’ve had to delays as we’ve tried to find an engineering firm who was willing to do the work for us on this, it’s been a little bit of comedy of errors when it comes to that stuff, because it’s been kind of stop and go, and that kind of thing.”
With the installation of the project starting soon, they’re looking for volunteers to help with the construction, he noted, and those wanting to help pitch in can contact Michael Loney at 482-1469.
In the meantime, fundraising will continue, he said, including Dabber bingo at the Emo Fair which will run on the Friday from 3-7 p.m., and Saturday from noon until 4 p.m. Volunteer Bingo callers are needed for that event, and those interested can contact Frances Flook at 482-1548
“We’ve got some other fundraising things that we’ve got planned going through the rest of the year,” Dunn said, noting that council was able to also provide some bridge funding. “So we’re hoping we’ll be able to top up our bank account and eliminate all of the costs involved with this new water treatment system.”
“We’re hoping that as we go forward that people continue to support the project, and we’re close it’s just all of the last minute hiccups unfortunately came at inopportune times and pushed things back.”
