Our City has a few well used, pleasant parks where dogs can walk off leash. One is located several hundred yards from a river, and maybe 200 yds from a driving range and 100 yds from a pet shelter. These have running water.
Many people have expressed the desire to put a small splash pad or water pump in the park. Some have expressed a desire for a streetlight. There are lights on the street close to the park.
I plan to ask the City to add these things. With big pandemic debts and many other problems, it will not be a priority. But it might be easy to fundraise for if the cost isn’t too high. What might be a reasonable estimate for a concrete 10 by 20 ft^2 surface with drainage, a pump or tap, 200 yards of water pipe and a streetlight needing 50 yards of wire to connect to the road? I understand local cost vary and will ask the City, but what might a reasonable ball park be?
The slab probably comes to under $10,000, way under if not a lot of excavation or prep work is needed. A street light should run about $2,000 but assuming you need an underground wire you’ll have additional excavation and material costs. The water supply might cost a lot, hundreds of dollars per foot installed.
Do you need an environmental impact study done? You’re close to a river, is it wetlands? Are you allowed to drain that water into the river? Those administrative costs can get up there too.
Add in the cost of hiring professionals. Maybe 5 different people:
To start, you need a land surveyor to make a topographical map of the area involved.
Plus the fees for engineers who will draw the design locations and write the specs. Maybe only one civil engineer, or possibly 3 separate engineers, for the water pipe, the electric wiring, and the drainage.
And then you may need another professional (engineer or architect) to draw up the proposal documents, submit them to the city planning department, get the appropriate stamps of approval from several departments within the city government, and , after hiring a contractor to do the work, sign off on the final documents that the project was built according to building code.
This isn’t for human use. Maybe go simpler, ask them to put in a simple water pump and see if there is any enthusiasm.
I carry a jug of water for my own dog anyway. Though it would be nice, again it is hardly the most urgent priority. Still, we’ve had a lot of days that “feel like” over 95 degrees. (Although Humidex and wind chill might be the weather equivalent of histrionics.)
I’ve seen public fountains shut down as well. Point is that people tend to hang out near the water sources, the dogs are not going there by themselves.
I am not anti-splash pad or water fountain. It’s just in these times I’ll don’t think you would get much traction for doing this sort of thing. YMMV of course.
I’d imagine the bigger issue would be maintenance and upkeep of the splash pad. Assuming the water is continuously recirculated, would it have to maintained like a pool? Chlorine, testing, chemical adjustments all that kind of stuff? Maybe it doesn’t, I really don’t know, but my WAG is that would be one of the hurdles. It’s one thing to do the construction, but then they have to have someone (possibly with some specific qualifications) to to check on it every day/few days. If you have a local public pool, it might be less of a big deal since someone from there might be able to handle this as well.
Maybe my choice of words was poor. I would like a supply of water suitable for washing and providing drinking water for dogs.
There is a park in Capital City which has a paved area the size of eight to twelve sidewalk panels with a water faucet connected to a hose. Nothing fancy. I’ve never been on a human splash pad but from the price I’m guessing it is quite a lot more complicated than my simple vision.
The City does not encourage going to parks at night and for this reason alone may not want lighting. It’s not like flashlights are hard to come by. Water isn’t either. But it would be nice to be able to hose a dog off spring to autumn. And the weather certainly seems hotter. I realize I can hose my dog off at home, and this is not maximum priority.
