The Dorchester Community Foundation Fund has targeted a small-scale water park as its next project.And the effort has been given a big boost thanks to a large donation from the Robert Havlat family, according to information obtained by the Dorchester Times.
The Robert Havlat family has given the community foundation $15,000, funding that will be used to construct the planned large splash pad, which will cost approximately $150,000.
A press release e-mailed to the Times quoted Wayne Havlat and Vera Havlat, both of whom said that directing the memorial funds towards the splash pad project would appropriately honor the memories of Robert Havlat, Sr. and Steve Havlat.
Dale Hayek, president of the Dorchester Community Foundation Fund, said, "The splash pad will take much community support and participation, and the Havlats have shown that with this large, charitable gift." Hayek also called the splash pad project the Foundation's "largest and most challenging project" yet.
In addition to the Havlat memorial donation, the Foundation held a major fundraiser March 18, hosting its annual steak and burger feed. No word yet on how much the event raised, but we've heard reports that it broke attendance records.
A splash pad is a small water park without a pool. It includes several water fountain or spray type features to help cool anyone off on those hot summer days. There are no lifeguard expenses, and it shuts off automatically when there is no activity. Splash pads are a popular, less expensive way for adding summer fun.
According to several websites we've seen, splash pads can be elaborate with water features such as a rainbow (semicircular pipe shower) or a tree shower.
Some splash pads feature movable nozzles similar to those found on fire trucks to allow users to spray others. These splash pads are often surfaced in textured non-slip concrete or in crumb rubber.
Dorchester's splash pad would be a larger splash pad, we are told, with the ability to expand it even more in the future. The project is expected to be located in the City Park and could begin construction as early as this summer if funding is adequate, our sources tell us.
If you would like to help speed the project along, donations are encouraged now, according to the e-mail we received.
If you would like to help speed the project along, donations are encouraged now, according to the e-mail we received.
Donations to the Dorchester Community Foundation Fund are accepted anytime, made payable to the Dorchester Foundation Community Fund and mailed to:
Dorchester Community Foundation Fund
c/o Peg Bergmeyer
101 Washington Ave.
Dorchester, NE 68343.
The Foundation is a non-profit subsidiary of the Nebraska Community Foundation, so all donations are tax deductible.
I am SOOOOO glad Dorchester is doing this. Also I am glad Dorchester will have a splash pad instead of a pool since pools are very expensive, can't be open as long and are unhealthy. Read this story and remember the more kids you have the more pee you have in a pool!
ReplyDeleteStudy: 8 Gallons Of Pee In An Average Public Pool
Nice swimming pool. How much do you want to bet that there's pee in there?
Stop peeing in pools. You may claim you are not doing it. But as indicated in my previous Forbes piece about how dirty many swimming pools and hot tubs are, one in five people admit to peeing in a pool...with the emphasis on the word admit. And now researchers at University of Alberta have a test to determine how much urine is in a swimming pool and using the test found in two swimming pools (one 110,000 gallons and another 220,000 gallons) nearly 8 gallons (30 liters) and 20 gallons (75 L) of urine. Since the average person does not excrete 20 gallons of urine during one pee (the average, according to a previous study, is 77.5 mL), this means that well over 400 people may have peed in the first pool and over 1,000 people in the second pool. Stop it. Stop using swimming pools and hot tubs as toilet bowls. Just stop it.
Even though this finding is definitely, definitely not sweet, how the researchers measured the urine was. In an article published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters, Lindsay K. Jmaiff Blackstock, Wei Wang, Sai Vemula, Benkjamin T. Jaeger and Xing-Fang Li described how they used the amount of a commonly used artificial sweetener, acesulfame-K (ACE), to measure how much urine is in a swimming pool or hot tub. When you eat or drink something with the artificial sweetener, much of it goes straight into your urine. Now, of course, the other possibility is that people are just pouring artificial sweeteners into the pools and hot tubs that were tested. But most likely, if a test detects lots of the sweetener in the pool or hot tub, "urine" trouble...because most it is probably from pee. So stop peeing in the pool.
Besides being disgusting, urine in pools is not exactly safe. (Stop peeing in the pool.) While chlorine can kill many nasty microorganisms, it doesn't just clean everything. In fact, the urine can react with the chlorine to produce toxic compounds such as cyanogen chloride (CNCl) and trichloramine (NCl3) that can irritate the eyes and lungs. (Not good, so stop peeing in the pool.) As Time previously reported, CNCI can damage the lungs, heart and central nervous system, while NCl3 could lead to acute lung injury. Now, it may take a ton of pee for real damage to occur, but you get the picture: peeing in the pool ain't completely safe and it ain't nice. So please stop it.
How do you stop peeing in pools and hot tubs? Just don't do it. Empty your bladder before you enter the swimming pool. Don't drink eight glasses of water before you take a dip. Remember everyone else has to swim in your pee. If you have to go, hold it. Yes, you are surrounded by water. Yes, water may make you want to go. Yes, it takes some effort to go to the bathroom (the real bathroom and not the swimming pool) and take off your swimsuit. But come on, for everyone's sake, just make the effort and don't pee in the pool or hot tub. Stop it, please.
You have way to much time on your hands to type all of this bs on urine. Please seek mental help immediately!
DeleteYou call it BS but why did so many media outlets do stories on it including this story from National Public Radio?
Deletehttp://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/01/517785902/just-how-much-pee-is-in-that-pool
Just How Much Pee Is In That Pool?
March 1, 20179:40 AM ET
NPR
You know that sharp odor of chlorine from the swimming pool you can recall from earliest childhood? It turns out it's not just chlorine, but a potent brew of chemicals that form when chlorine meets sweat, body oils, and urine.
But up until now, just how much urine has been difficult to measure, says chemist Xing-Fang Li of the University of Alberta. Li and her colleagues report they can now tell roughly how much pee is in a pool by measuring the artificial sweeteners carried in most people's urine. Certain sweeteners can be a good proxy for pee, she says, because they're designed to "go right through you" and don't break down readily in pool water.
The scientists calculated that one 220,000-gallon, commercial-size swimming pool contained almost 20 gallons of urine. In a residential pool (20-by-40-foot, five-feet deep), that would translate to about two gallons of pee. It's only about one-hundredth of a percent, but any urine in a swimming pool can be a health concern for some people, not to mention that smell that never quite goes away.
Li's team collected water from pools and hot tubs at hotels and recreation facilities in two Canadian cities and measured the amount of a sweetener called acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K, for short. It's found in everything from yogurt to soup these days, so it's no surprise that it's ubiquitous in our urine.
It's not just in the North American diet. Ace-K has been found in people's urine in China too. And enough people are peeing in pools for sweeteners to show up there, too.
"I think you can assume that if people are using your pool, they're peeing in it," says Ernest Blatchley III, an environmental engineer at Purdue University.
Apart from being gross, that's also a potential health hazard. Chlorine reacts with urine to form a host of potentially toxic compounds called disinfection byproducts. These can include anything from the chloramines that give well-used pools the aforementioned odor, to cyanogen chloride, which is classified as a chemical warfare agent. There are also nitrosamines, which can cause cancer. There's not enough evidence to say whether the nitrosamine levels in pools increase cancer risk, Blatchley says, but one study in Spain did find more bladder cancers in some long-term swimmers.
its your pal cynical here .............................. welcome to our "OOL" ......................................................... notice there is "P" in it ................................ please keep it that way ...........................................
ReplyDeleteI just want to say how proud I am of our village for working together on this project!
DeleteThanks to the Havlats for their generous donation and all those who've been involved early in the fundraising process!!