A word of thanks
If you've not been over to Lakeview Park recently, you have a surprise in store. Over the past few weeks, the Corrections Dept. crew has been out pretty much every day removing 10 years' worth of invasive undergrowth that was choking the canals and making it difficult to see the lakes, let alone play disk golf. They even dredged the canals to give the water space to move.
Clean sight-lines now look across opened-up vistas that offer a whole new perspective on the park. For one thing, I'll bet you didn't know that one of the small ponds (along the Lago Road side) has two small islands -- I asked one person who's been coming to the park nearly every day for years, and she said it was a revelation to her.
One odd thing: there are piles of dead wood that have been collected and placed at the base of some trees, many of which themselves are dead. I wondered why this wood hadn't been removed by the crew, which did a great job of removing tons of brush, weeds and invasives growing along the canals and ponds.
According to someone who spoke with Corrections, the reason is that Corrections was tasked specifically with dealing with the waterways. The department is reimbursed by the County for its work, but its work was carefully delimited and didn't include the piles of dead wood.
As my source noted, it might be difficult to find any contractor who would do the clearing any less expensively than Corrections, which uses inmate labor. Such are the vagaries of budgetary austerity. The unfortunate result is that while the park looks great, piles of dry wood that could prove a fire hazard going into the dry season are scattered around the park.
So in this time of Thanksgiving, we thank the County, and Parks and Rec, and Corrections. If we had a holiday wish, it's that someone would ask these good workers to finish the job.
Clean sight-lines now look across opened-up vistas that offer a whole new perspective on the park. For one thing, I'll bet you didn't know that one of the small ponds (along the Lago Road side) has two small islands -- I asked one person who's been coming to the park nearly every day for years, and she said it was a revelation to her.
One odd thing: there are piles of dead wood that have been collected and placed at the base of some trees, many of which themselves are dead. I wondered why this wood hadn't been removed by the crew, which did a great job of removing tons of brush, weeds and invasives growing along the canals and ponds.
According to someone who spoke with Corrections, the reason is that Corrections was tasked specifically with dealing with the waterways. The department is reimbursed by the County for its work, but its work was carefully delimited and didn't include the piles of dead wood.
As my source noted, it might be difficult to find any contractor who would do the clearing any less expensively than Corrections, which uses inmate labor. Such are the vagaries of budgetary austerity. The unfortunate result is that while the park looks great, piles of dry wood that could prove a fire hazard going into the dry season are scattered around the park.
So in this time of Thanksgiving, we thank the County, and Parks and Rec, and Corrections. If we had a holiday wish, it's that someone would ask these good workers to finish the job.
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