The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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  • A sign lists the rules at the fountain at Gateway Park in downtown Dalton. The fountain may be turned on again after some work is done to its system. Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen

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September 4, 2010

Popular fountain could be reopened

Charles Oliver charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com

DALTON — Children could once again be splashing in Dalton’s Gateway Park fountain.

The fountain, on Thornton Avenue near the county’s Administrative Building 1, was closed more than three years ago because of the drought.

But with the drought now over, officials with the Dalton Parks and Recreation Department are looking at turning the fountain back on.

“Cope Brothers will be working with us next week to look at the pump and the electrical system to see what we need to do to get the pump up and running,” said Recreation Director Ronnie Nix. “It appears that, at some point, water got in there and shorted out some of the electrical panels, and the pump has to be replaced as well.”

Nix said the company that made the pump is no longer in business.

“After they have evaluated the pump and determined what we need to do, we’ll make a decision on whether to move forward. It may be too expensive. I don’t know the answer to that,” Nix said. “The recreation commission approved $7,000 to get the fountain back running at one of their meetings a couple of months ago, but we don’t know how much it is going to cost.”

Nix said if the decision is to turn the pump back on the city still may not be able to turn it on again this year.

“If we get word we can get this done on budget and we can get it done fairly quickly, we may be able to go ahead and crank it up,” he said. “But at some point we’d have to winterize it, like you’d winterize any other pump, and wait until next spring to turn it back on.”

The fountain was a popular play area for local children and families, but officials closed it in June 2007 because of the drought and vandalism.

At that time, officials said it appeared that homeless people were washing their clothes in the fountain. The soap they used destroyed the chlorine used to kill bacteria in the water. So city officials had to drain the fountain, as often as every week, and fill it with new water for safety reasons.

“To the best of my memory, we were using an average of 1,500 gallons of water each week,” said Public Works Director Benny Dunn.

 

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