By Kim Siebert MacPhail
Now that Summer Adventures and the outdoor concerts are over and the dock at Springs Brook comes out of the water this Friday (the last day the Park will be open is August 23), Recreation Director Amy Hamilton might actually be able to take a day off. Then again, with Bedford Day coming up—applications for the parade and to secure a booth were due August 9—and fall sports about to gear up, that day off might just turn, instead, into just an hour off here and there.
Catching up with Hamilton at her office recently, The Citizen asked how the Recreation Department’s summer programs fared and learned that it has, generally, been a good summer:
Springs Brook Park
This was the second year with the new, coarser-grained sand that, in an effort to solve water clarity problems, replaced the finer-grained sand that was believed to be the biggest contributing factor to the pond’s cloudiness. Hamilton said that this summer’s water clarity was almost identical to last summer and that even though the coarser grain has improved conditions from the years before the sand was changed, cloudiness can still be an issue.
“The fact that it was similar was better than we thought it would be,” Hamilton said. “We still had shut-down days. You can usually tell in the morning how quickly it will deteriorate. It all depends on the ‘beta load’—if there are Summer Adventure swim lessons and public lessons, that’s high-volume use. If the water’s not clear in the morning on these days, you know that by 2:30. . . it’s going to be shut down.
“We don’t even know what all the contributing factors are,” Hamilton continued. “Sometimes, the next morning it’s still murky and sometimes it’s cleared up significantly. We look at things like evening temperature, rainfall—but there’s not always a pattern there.”
“This is the time of year when it clears—it was that way even [before the sand was swapped out]. A couple of weeks before we shut down, it’s beautiful. There are no swim lessons so the beta load goes down. The color changes, too. It looks more. . .aqua, blue-green. Everything about it is beautiful,” Hamilton added.
Hamilton noted that Springs Brook closes in August even though there will be warm stretches through September because the life guards—mostly college students—head back to school and there’s no one to staff the park.
The Springs Brook Park Committee—consisting of representatives from the Board of Selectmen, the Town Manager’s office, the DPW, the Board of Health, and the Recreation Department—will now meet as the season is winding down to assess the summer and renew deliberations about what to do next. Hamilton listed some of the questions the Committee will address: “Are we happy with how things are? Is this what we want going forward? Do we want to better things?”
Outdoor Concerts
The change of venue from the Common to the Mudge Way campus seemed to be a better arrangement, according to Hamilton: Kids could run around, parking was more plentiful, bathrooms were easily accessed. However, the weather on the Thursday nights during July and early August did not cooperate and Hamilton said that two of the five concert nights were complete rain-outs.
“Every concert had a rain issue, except for July 4,” Hamilton noted.
The first and last concerts—Dan Clark, “the Singing Trooper” featuring Dan Clark— and “Soul of Boston,” featuring Bedford resident Dave Ellis, respectively—were well received, although Hamilton said that it is hard every year to attract a good crowd on the fourth of July.
Next year, Hamilton says that the Recreation Commission will look into making the grassy slope concert space into more of “an area” with, perhaps, some benches or landscaping. Additionally, she would like to find a way to put a retractable awning over the band’s performance platform so that the musicians and their instruments have more protection from sun or rain.
Summer Adventures
Formerly known as “Bedford Summer Day Camp”, Summer Adventures provides children from elementary school through middle school ages with a variety of activities, including swim lessons at Springs Brook Park. Hamilton says that the numbers of participants in Summer Adventures have been “very consistent.”
She added, however that, “We have, over the years, seen our numbers of older kids decline. In part, that’s us competing with us, with our specialty camps out there for the older kids.”
Hamilton said that a survey of participating families this year provided a lot of good program suggestions that she will use for future planning.
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