After several years of drought, Wichita Falls water park, Castaway Cove, can stop hauling in water and finally make repairs to the bottom of their pools before the summer season.
Several water storage tanks were once the lifeline of Castaway Cove, but they will not be needed this summer.
"A couple of years ago, we had to be open.... we had to ship water in. And we had some storage tanks that we had to fill up everyday and then we would run a big hose over and fill our pools up once or twice a day. And it was up to about 20,000 gallons of water a day that we were bringing in," Castaway Cove park manager, Steve Vaughn, said.
They brought in the water because during the drought restrictions and regulations, the water park could not use city water. Shipping in the water cost about $70,000 a season, but after several rains, Texoma is finally out of the years-long drought.
"They're probably more relieved than we are because they don't have that negative connotation," Russell Schreiber, public works director, said. "'You shouldn't be open. You shouldn't using water during a drought.'"
For the first time in five years, the park was able to drain all of the pools during the off-season for much needed maintenance.
"This area in Texas you're always going to have cracks in the bottom of the pool, you're going to have some tiles coming up," Vaughn said. "And with the water in there it's kind of hard to fix sometimes."
However, just because they are back on city water does not mean that they are not thinking about conservation.
However, we always need to conserve our water and we will continue conserving our water... how we water the grass, how we clean the area. And we're not going to waste water. We're going to use it when we need it," Vaughn said.
"But it's all recycled. You know? They don't use a lot of water. I don't have those exact figures in front of me, but it's not much more than a small apartment complex," Schreiber said.
It will also save the park a lot of money.
"It's probably going to save us just about 60,000 dollars," Vaughn said.
This will allow them to possibly bring other activities and new events into the park this season.
The park will open May 14.
