EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) -- While hot weather is expected this weekend, the water to cool down will be missing from Eugene's Spray Play parks.
Almost two months later, lingering snowstorm damage in Eugene's parks is now delaying crews from opening the pipes for the city's popular spray play areas.
Both Washington Park and Skinner Butte Park's Spray Play areas will stay dry, likely until June 2012.
Eugene Parks Supervisor Chris Girard says maintenance crews are still cleaning up dozens of downed trees. They're also having a hard time mowing because it's been so wet.
On top of that, crews are also dealing with day to day work like picking up litter and responding to other park issues.
All of it means crews can’t inspect and turn on irrigation systems yet to get the Spray Play areas going.
“We spent close to $300,000 on storm clean-up between public works maintenance and parks and open space and like I said, we had hundreds of trees down in the right of way,” says Chris Girard, South Eugene Region Park Supervisor for Eugene Parks and Open Space.
“It's just one of those things that we didn't expect to happen and it did happen and now we're busy doing the best we can,” says Girard.
The city has about 52 miles of park irrigation pipe to inspect. It's hoping to get the water running again in spray play parks by June, 1st, 2012 at the latest.
To help finish things a little faster, Eugene Parks says it could use some volunteer help.
The city's park volunteer program is pretty open ended as well. People can choose to work on a random project or gather a neighborhood group to focus on their own nearby park.
For more information on how to volunteer for Eugene Parks and Open Space, click the following link: http://www.eugene-or.gov/parkvolunteer.
