water features and their associated plumbing and equipment was completed by the General Services Division. Since that first installation, the City has constructed five more spray parks for a total of six and has the seventh currently under construction. These have ranged in size from 1,650 square feet to 3,900 square feet, and have included nine to 25 water features. Total construction costs have ranged from $220,000 to $400,000, with all but one being constructed by City forces. Four of these locations replaced existing pools which were demolished due to their age, extremely high maintenance costs, low attendance and failure to meet health and safety codes.
Along the way the City learned some lessons. After a year of operation, it was determined that the maintenance cost of the recycled water systems was higher than expected due to the need for daily inspection of the water quality control, and cleaning the system of leaves and trash. These conditions created an excessive amount of down time resulting in inconvenience to the citizens utilizing the facility as well as high maintenance costs. This resulted in a design change to utilize a flow-thru system which requires very little maintenance. Fortunately only two recycled systems were installed and these have now been converted to the flow-thru systems. Initially sole-source bids were obtained for the water feature equipment, and that has been revised to competitive bidding resulting in a savings of approximately 20%. It’s been a win-win for the citizens of Bakersfield and the City. Each of the new spray parks is open for six months and attracts an average of 100 to 1,000 users per day. Pool attendance is up in the remaining six pools, providing a better cost ratio for the City. This is a great success story for the City of Bakersfield and it is not unusual for the Recreation Division to give tours to colleagues from other cities to share best practices in relation to the spray parks. Brad Underwood can be reached at (661) 326-3725 or bunderwo@ bakersfieldcity.us.
Children enjoying themselves at one of the spray parks
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April 2009
APWA Reporter
75