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PARKERSBURG – City workers had to clean up Friendship Park earlier this week after someone used the yard hydrant at the 13th Street site to create a “muddy mess.”
Joe Nelson, parks and recreation and floodwall superintendent for the city, said people turned the water on, left it running and threw mud around the park Tuesday night.
“They just made a muddy mess,” Nelson said. “They wallered around in that mud and made a big hole.”
Parks workers on Wednesday cleaned the surfaces in the park and poured a concrete pad in the area where the most mud was to prevent a similar occurrence in the future, Nelson said.
“This has happened before, and we’re trying to find a way we can turn the water off (to the hydrant) without turning off the (water) fountain,” he said.
Previously, vandals have broken off the loops on the hydrant where a lock could be placed, Nelson said.
Parkersburg Police Chief Joe Martin said vandalism has been an ongoing problem at Friendship Park.
“We have more destruction at that park than any of the other parks combined,” he said.
Martin said parks employees do a good job cleaning up the park. He noted incidents have not been as frequent since spruce trees were removed from the fence line, improving visibility into the park.