Spray field will be available for public use as park
By mid-spring Hollister residents willbenefit from a new 50-acre
park that will be maintained using reclaimed from the city’s new
wastewater treatment plant. Construction is scheduled to begin by
Oct. 15.
Spray field will be available for public use as park
By mid-spring Hollister residents willbenefit from a new 50-acre park that will be maintained using reclaimed from the city’s new wastewater treatment plant. Construction is scheduled to begin by Oct. 15.
The average citizen will not have anything to show for the new treatment plant except higher sewer bills, said Steve Wittry, engineering manager for Hollister.
“This gives them the opportunity to enjoy something that they are paying for,” Wittry said. “I have kids myself and we’re trying to find places to practice baseball all the time. This should solve a lot of those problems.”
The park will be as large as Veteran’s Memorial Park, said Clay Lee, director of Community Services for Hollister.
“There’s a lot that can be done with that space,” Lee said. “A lot of groups can be out there.”
Consultants from Perma-Green Hydroseeding, Inc., a company based in Gilroy, will construct the park on the old Brigantino property near the San Juan-Hollister Road bridge.
“We don’t really have an official name for it yet,” Wittry said.
The $1.7 million job involves demolition of homes on the site, grading the site, laying pipeline for irrigation, seeding turf and building a maintenance shed and parking lot, Wittry said. The contract will be paid for with city wastewater funds.
“It’s a very large job,” Wittry said. “The site is 50 acres. It’s huge. If you just walk the perimeter, it’s a mile.”
The construction will take 100 days, but the turf will need four months to be established before it can be used.
“By springtime the grass will be out there,” Wittry said. “By mid-spring it will be available for use.”
The park will not feature any amenities in the short term, Wittry said, due to limitations in how wastewater funds can be used.
The field could be a place for local soccer teams to hold practice, said Jose Arios, a Hollister resident.
“A lot of teams don’t practice because it’s always so busy,” Arios said.
Anna Gatherer, a Hollister resident, agreed.
“I’m 23 and there’s nothing to do here,” Gatherer said. “I think the only thing that’s kept me out of trouble is soccer.”
Down the road the park may get more amenities.
“We’re looking at utilizing some park funds to do a master planning effort out there to determine what will be the best layout for that park,” Wittry said.
There is about $200,000 in the city’s park fund, he said. That should be enough to develop master plans for the park and a park planned for an undeveloped section of Park Hill.
The public will have the opportunity to tell the members of the parks and recreation commission how they want the park developed, Lee said.
New sports fields would help ease overuse of existing sports fields, Lee said.
“We have a lot of user groups that are vying for a limited amount of space, especially adult and youth sports groups that use fields,” Lee said.
The fields at Rancho San Justo have been used nonstop for nearly 23 years, he said.
“Even though it has held up for the most part, fields like that, every once in a while you need to give it a break during growth times,” Lee said. “We have not been able to do that because we have nowhere else.”
The park will have additional benefits.
“Hopefully this park becomes the catalyst for a lot of other things to happen,” Wittry said.
It will be a link to a 17-mile trail system along the San Benito River from San Juan Bautista to Bolado Park, Wittry said.
Other uses for reclaimed water
City officials will need to find a place for 2.5 million gallons of wastewater per day when the treatment plant goes online, according to Steve Wittry, the engineering manager for Hollister. The water is treated to the same standard as drinking water and can be used for anything except drinking water.
As the city grows and the amount of wastewater increases, the city has already identified two sites where additional water can go. They have plans to accommodate the growth through 2017.
Initial sites:
Park – the turf park along the West gateway will be watered with treated wastewater from the plant and will be open to the public in Spring 2009 for use as a soccer field or open space
Hollister Municipal airport – a dusty field at the airport will be planted with turf and watered with treated water from the plant
Future sites:
Local farms – in other regions treated wastewater has been used to irrigate farmland, and the city will talk to local farmers about this possibility in the future
West Gateway – the water could be used for landscaping along San Juan/Fourth Street on the west side of town
