Repairs to a four-inch waterline at Howard Park earlier this month will probably cost the Wilmette Park District “a couple of thousand dollars,” a district official said Jan. 12.
Bill Lambrecht, the district’s parks and planning superintendent, said the four-inch cast iron line that sprang the leak provides irrigation for the park fields in the summer. It also provides water to a park building that houses the Warming House Youth Center, including washrooms that serve Youth Center patrons and park users, he said.
The park is located in central Wilmette at 830 17th St., south of Lake Avenue and just east of the Wilmette Police Department on Ridge Road.
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Lambrecht said the leak was discovered during the first week of January, when water bubbled up onto one of the park’s grass fields, near its parking lot. The leak forced a water shutoff for about a day and a half, until contractors fixed it, he added.
Although the full cost isn’t yet determined, “I’d guess it will be a couple of thousand dollars,” Lambrecht said.
The line was probably laid in the 1940s or 1950s, when the former Howard School was still in existence on the property, he said. According to “Wilmette: A History” by George D. Bushnell, Howard School was built in 1927. It closed in 1979 and was demolished in 1983. The land later became Howard Park.
Replacing the current water line is in the district’s long-term capital planning, Lambrecht said.
In addition to replacing the pipe, the district will be able to reroute the line, he said. Right now, it runs in a very indirect route from its connection with the village water system to its end, he told park board commissioners in a January report.
The line now runs from the end of Spencer Avenue, which intersects with 17th Street, south under the parking lot, then runs west, just north of an alley behind the police station, until it turns and runs north to a connection with Howard’s irrigation system and, finally, to the building, he reported.
“In our future planning, we’ll replace that main so that it will go in a much straighter direction,” he said Jan. 12.
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