The late spring has slowed down the Crookston Parks and Recreation staff a bit this spring, but Director Scott Riopelle says things are starting to get rolling and Central Park will be ready for the opening of camping season May 15. “With the late snowfalls and the wetness, it is a little bit slower,” said Riopelle. “But now that everything is gone the crews have been out working in the parks getting garbage cans out, dressing things up. The big thing after the recent high-water incident to get Central Park back in shape with cleaning the roadways. Put all of our power back in. We remove the electrical components, so we don’t have to replace them later. We also have to get the ranger station back in place. And the camping season will open on the 15 of May so just a couple of weeks from now.”
Once the water recedes, Riopelle says clean-up in the park is primarily limited to remove the silt deposits from the roads. “Most of that stuff is taken care of with rain,” said Riopelle. “There isn’t anything that is hazardous that comes into the park. If any fish come in there, there are enough eagles in the area that take care of that. Sometimes with high-water, we’ll find fish in puddles but those usually disappear with the wildlife we have in the area. The rest of it is a silt or sandy type stuff that ends up on the roadways we have to get dried out and swept or scraped up. There are a few posts that may need to be put back up that we hadn’t removed that were taken out by ice.”
Spring sports have also been struggling to get on the fields with the wet conditions. Riopelle says work should start progressing as school’s let out and more seasonal staff is hired. “We’ve got crews working on the ball fields a little bit trying to get the spring sports in,” said Riopelle. “That’s been later with all the snowfall and then there are frost issues. It seems it’s dry and frost keeps coming to the surface and wetting it. They’ve been working a little but up there, we just don’t have a whole lot of staff right now. Once school is out for the spring we will have some students and summer help coming on and start mowing 300 acres plus.”
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