From Water Wonderland to water wasteland
By Corey Paul, Odessa American, Texas | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Water Wonderland.
It's a place, where if you lived here 30 years ago, you zipped down water slides, rode in bumper cars and endured a mega wave in the wave pool. But Howard said he filmed for other reasons.
"Because I wanted to, and it because it's ugly," Howard said. "It's just the most obvious place to go, pretty awesome. Those are some of my favorite pictures. It just looks like a wasteland right now. Kind of a post-apocalyptic water park."
From above the abandoned park, in a region struggling with drought, Howard captured the defiled elephant inside the kiddie pool. The penis spray-painted at the top of the creaky, deteriorating water slides. The broken fence, a lot of junk, vandalism and overgrown grass. Not very much water.
And it seems Water Wonderland will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future, despite the occasionally optimistic TV news report or the
"Is it ever going to open? No. It's dead. It's gone. It's history," said
The park was built in 1980 at about 16 acres, including a miniature golf course.
In 1994, when the water park first entered bankruptcy, the
Then city workers had to refurbish the park in two weeks before the influx of squealing summer children began. There were leaks, rattlesnakes and skunks. The 17 water wells on the property didn't suffice, so the city ended up laying down the same rubber lines used on oilfield leases to pump water from the Mission Dorado area.
The next year, the city lost a bid for the water park.
The year after that -- 1996 -- 3-year-old
In the years that followed, the park changed hands, until it finally shuttered as Hero's
The owners reportedly defaulted on maintenance payments of roughly half a million to today's owner, Aquatic Commercial Solutions, or ACS, an equipment company based in
ACS sold off surrounding lands. Owner
In June, he lauded a decision by
And now, a master plan for Parks and Rec includes a recommendation for another water park or a larger water park that could serve as a destination for people in the surrounding region and beyond, but with the boom, Patton said that as planned is at least roughly five years away.
"If that happened sooner, it would be great for our area," Patton said. ". . .There are so many water park features now. That would be cool. That would be fun. Opening up that old dinosaur with all those old amenities, that would not be fun."
As it stands, a fence lined with barbed-wire surrounds the ruins of Water Wonderland, but the barrier is rendered useless by a large gap -- apparently the result of someone knocking down a chained gate. Inside, the graffiti artists still come, as do vagrants and drug users, said
"We had a case a while back where somebody put the N-word very visibly where people could see it," Painter said. "Awful."
And he said they investigated, determining kids were the culprits, but they could never reach the
Even still, the former Wonderland does not rise to the level of "public nuisance" in the sheriff's view that would allow the county to seize, condemn and demolish it. That may be justified if people were selling drugs out of the ruins, or people were getting hurt or there was some other safety threat -- but that is not the case.
"Mainly," Painter said. "It's just run-down and ugly and full of weeds."
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