The pond at Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City is filling up, turning the surrounding area of the park into a water retention basin. (Lindsay Aerts, KSL NewsRadio)
SALT LAKE CITY — Don’t be suprised if your neighborhood park fills with flood water as temperatures rise. It is actually by design.
A number of parks and fields are constructed that way as part of the system to prevent flooding elsewhere.
Parks and fields across the Salt Lake Valley serve a critical role when it comes to helping keep spring runoff from becoming spring flooding. When the waters rise like they did a couple of weeks ago in Sugar House, much of that water collected in the Sugar House Park basin.
Salt Lake County has more than 30 detention ponds or debris basins and more than half of those are the parks or fields that we all know and love. The idea is that by giving the water a place to go, it keeps it from encroaching on homes somewhere downstream, easing the pressure off our swollen creeks.
If you are worried about flooding in your area, many cities are giving out free sand bags.