New Bend park’s road-watering irrigation upsets neighbors

On a bright and sunny day, it’s unusual to see so much water in the middle of Butler Market Road in Bend. A frustrated neighbor sent NewsChannel 21 photos of the irrigation system at the new Canal Row Park, being built right off Butler Market and Brinson Boulevard.

“Wow! I mean, are they really going to water the asphalt that much?” one resident said.

“It’s a big waste of water, too,” said another concerned neighbor, Ron Siefkin.

“We keep expecting it to be fixed — nothing happens,” Siefkin said. “It just happens over and over.”

You would l think that would be high on their list, because the ecology is a high part of Bend Parks,” said Sue Siefkin. “So my husband was really happy there’s grass there, but we’re not happy that the water is not going in the right place.”

These concerns have not fallen on deaf ears.

“A week ago, one of our staff on site received a comment from a neighbor, which he passed along to me, and we passed it along to our general contractor,” said Jason Powel, construction supervisor for the Bend Park and Recreation District.

Powell said received two other firsthand comments and has since been addressing these issues.

“We had a meeting out here last Friday about a number of different issues, but one of them of course was head placement and nozzle choices and that kind of thing, so that’s being addressed,” Powell said.

Chelsea Schneider, a landscape architect with the district, said that “irrigation needs to be a little more substantial at the beginning of development of a project, because you need to make sure that the plant material has the proper amount of irrigation to be established.

But with the proper irrigation comes the concern for water conservation.

“We just came back from taking our daughter to Southern California to college, and you know, water is a huge problem all over the state,” Ron Siefkin said. “And they’re conserving in every way they can and really just pinching for every last drop — and here we are watering our asphalt.”

Powell said with the design of this new park, the conservation concerns people have now will be alleviated later.

He explained, “This zone and the zones around the edges of the park, where it’s the dry land meadow type seed blends, at a certain point once they’re established we will be able to solely water the trees on bubblers, and the other zones that water the grasses can be turned off.”

Although neighbors have these concerns now, they’re looking forward to having the new park in their neighborhood.

“We are really happy,” Sue Siefkin said. “We are happy there’s access from the street for strollers, and we’re happy we have a park we can access without crossing huge roads. I think it’s going to be a great thing, it’s beautiful.”