Pine Peace Playground Flooding Is Result of Break in Water Line

Flooding at the Pine Peace playground, above, has kept the basketball court and the playground clsoed for weeks.

The flooding which has plagued the Pine Peace playground and basketball court for several weeks was caused by a break in a WAPA line, St. John Administrator Leona Smith announced last week.

The line likely burst several weeks ago, and the recent rains have only compounded the flooding problem.

“The last update I received from the Department of Housing, Parks and Recreation is one of the major factors of the flooding in that area was a WAPA water line that burst,” said Smith. “They fixed the pipe last weekend, and as soon as the water runs off somewhat, we’ll be able to utilize the basketball court.”

Commissioner of Public Works Darryl Smalls and a representative from Housing, Parks and Recreation will visit the waterlogged playground sometime this week to discuss ways to alleviate the flooding problem.

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The basketball court will be raised or moved, according to St. John Administrator Leona Smith.

 

Raise, Move Court
Raising the court to prevent future flooding, or relocating the court to an undetermined parcel of government land are two remedies which have been discussed, explained Smith.

“We’ll decide whether we’re going to raise the court, because we think if we do that, it might alleviate most of the problem when we have heavy rains,” said the administrator. “We will also be looking for an alternative site to move that court from there. We don’t know where we’ll move it; we have to look at government properties to see if we have appropriate space to move the court.”

WAPA will help remedy the flooding problem since they contributed to the damage, Smith added.

Getting the basketball court useable again is imperative to the island’s children, explained Smith.

“The kids need it for sure,” the administrator said. “School is going to be out in the next week or so, and they have basketball leagues going on, so they need a basketball court. We are going to work expeditiously to get it fixed.”