Staying hydrated while outside just got a lot easier for those at Jaycee or Kingston park.
The Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit and the Parks Department have partnered together to initiate a pilot project to install one water cooler drinking fountain at each of the two parks.
We re working on a pilot project to install water cooler drinking fountains at Kingston and Jaycee Parks to encourage reusable bottles.
— Chatham Kent (@MunicCK) July 27, 2016
Supervisor of Parks and Water Culture for Chatham-Kent Deb Veccia says the partnership started around the beginning of the year where talks started over the amount of plastic water bottles accumulating at two of Chatham-Kent's busiest parks.
"We've tried to encourage recycling in parks over the past few years," says Veccia. "The problem with recycling in parks - in our larger parks - is that they do end up getting contaminated and it ends up not being a successful program."
She says the fountains are part of a different approach to becoming eco-friendly.
Like most drinking fountains they will have a bottle refilling station but Beccia says there's one more addition to them that will help determine how successful the project is.
"They count how many water bottles have been avoided in landfills," says Veccia. "They go by ounces."
The success of the project will be determined after a year of observation. Veccia says if it's successful they may start another partnership or seek grants in order to get the funding to install more fountains in other parks.
Veccia says the fountains at Kingston park and Jaycee park should be installed by the end of the week and ready for public use by August 1.
