The drought is over. Restart the fountain. That word (or something like it) from Jasper City Hall put city laborers to work reconfiguring the former marble monolith sprayfest now dry for some time at the corner of North Main and Whitfield streets.
The city turned off the fountain faucet for more than the watering ban, a city workman explained. Plastic fountain piping, installed under poured concrete when the fountain was built, sprung a leak, both filling an underground junction box and producing a significant water loss over time.
The piping predicament prompted a problem-solving redesign for the fountain. Mayor John Weaver and department supervisors did most of the brainstorming, the worker said.
"The old lines were poured under concrete," the workman said. "We could not determine where they were leaking because they were under so much concrete. We'd have had to jack hammer it all up."
Instead, a new above-ground pipe will deliver water to the main fountain spray between stone uprights, he said. Smaller sprays of old will be dry in this redo. At the finish, fill gravel will hide the new pipe.
Two ponds will grace the new and improved fountain. As designed, an upper pond bounded by wooden box planters will catch falling flow from the main fountain jet. Overflow from this box pond sluices down a gravel-bedded "rapid" on the Main Street side to a larger collection pond at the fountain's lower end.
The lower pond (about 18 inches deep) will pool inside the existing brick wall that defines the fountain perimeter. New courses of brick (to add wall height) and a new pond liner should make the raised wall water tight and pond ready.
A new short, poured concrete dam impounds the lower pond, allowing outflow up the Whitfield Street side over a crescent-shaped spillway and back to the fountain pump that keeps the whole works splashing.
Look also for the addition of weeping willow trees at the upper end of the fountain area toward the Old Jail.
"It'll be something different from what it is––a little bit different," the city man said. "We'll be takin' some of them rocks out too. I think it'll be better than it was before, especially when he gets those weeping willows in there," he ventured.
A city crew has worked on the fountain project between other jobs until this week when the city upped its concentration at Whitfield and Main in a sprint to have the fountain frothing again by the Fourth of July.
The city worker who provided project information to the Progress would not provide his name for publication. "Don't put my name in there," he commanded. We didn't.
Mayor John Weaver confirmed he expects most of the fountain work to be finished for the Fourth. “We’ll have the fountain on and the water flowing by then,” Weaver said. “I’d say we’ll have about 90 percent of it done.” Some additional elements will come later, he said. |
|
|
| PHOTO BY JEFF WARREN |
| In a spot soon to be submerged, city employee, Daniel Gorth, prepares to add brick to the fountain wall at its northwest corner. The raised sealed wall will bank a new pond near the corner of Whitfield and Main. |
|
|
