The lake behind Periwinkle School looked like this on Wednesday, with the playground in the distance. Today the water was being pumped away.
The huge puddle behind Perwinkle Elementary School in Albany was being drained today, the city parks department reports.
The unexpected and unwanted lake was between the school and Periwinkle Park, on the north side of a little ridge that separates the school area from the park’s regular pond.
On Wednesday, when I looked at the place, I assumed that all that water in an unusual spot was the result of rain and melt from the previous week’s winter storm. That turned out to be wrong.
“There is a plug in the drain system somewhere,” Rick Barnett of the parks department told me via email today when I asked him about it.
“We initially thought it was at the school,” Barnett added. “Not so sure now — it may be at the park. Typically our maps are pretty accurate but in this case they are not at all. The school district is taking the lead on pumping the water out and getting the lines cleaned.”
If the drain problem is found to be at the park, the city will pick up the cost of the pumping, Barnett said. And if it’s at the school, the city and the Albany schools will split the expense.
The City of Albany is working on a master plan for upgrading its system for handling stormwater. Looks like this might be an illustration of why that project comes at the right time. (hh)
It makes sense to me that if the problem is the Cities, the
City pays, if the problem is the schools then the school pays, but why split the cost if the problem is the schools?
Doesn’t really matter. Either way, the taxpayers pay.
It does make a difference whose budget it comes out of and whether or not there’s any money left to do other things that it was appropriated for.
So I headed over there to see the happening but it was already finished. The water is mostly gone, then I wondered what they did with the water. The logical thing to do would be to pump it over into Periwinkle Lake. There was a place where it looked like maybe a large hose left an imprint on the Lake side.
If this water is from an underground breach it would seem like it would be expected to reappear especially since a lot of rain is forecast for this weekend.
Maybe someone can pour some concrete and form it into a bench and get some business or rich person to put their name on it and charge $75,000. Hey, the city seems to think that is going to work in Monteith Park. Why not Periwinkle Park near Periwinkle School?
Maybe they’ll accept donations to have their name on a traffic camera.
The “Ray K” traffic camera at ______ .