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Federal Aid Is Helping County Parks

Federal Aid Is Helping County Parks image Federal Aid Is Helping County Parks image
Parent Issue
Day
20
Month
April
Year
1975
Copyright
Copyright Protected
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Thanks to a recent federal grant to Washtenaw County to help with the unemployment problem here, area parks are getting some badly-needed rehabilitation, construction, and just general clean-up, to get ready for summer recreationists. The program is called CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act), and grants under the program are being administered by the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission, the County Drain Commission office and the city of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is apparently holding on to much of theirs, to help with an expected lay-off of some city workers, but the Parks Commission and the Drain Commission are busy putting theirs to work now. The grants became effective March 17, and go to June 30, and the money is sufficient to hire about 24 aides and 4 supervisors for each of the two units. The pay isn't a whole lot, but it's sufficient to attract workers who otherwise wouldn't have a job at all in this particular period. The Drain Commission crews have been at work in various parts of the county, cleaning small creeks and drains, and now are concentrated on several in the Augusta Township area. The Parks Commission crews have likewise been scattered throughout the county, working for the cities of Milan, Manchester, Saline, and Chelsea; the Joint Ypsilanti Township Organization; Project Grow; Ypsilanti Township; the Waterloo and Pinckney Recreation Areas; and county parks Lyndon and Northfield, and on schedule are projects in Dexter and Pittsfield Township. We visited one of the crews in Curtis park in Saline. They had just finished rip-rapping the banks of the little stream that flows through the park in an area subject to erosion, and were busy raking and smoothing an area for planting grass where a wooden separating fence had been constructed. After that we took off to the Waterloo area, where a couple of crews were helping naturalist Tom Hodgson brush out the new trails in the area where the nature center will be located. Tom has laid out seven trails throughout the large area off Pierce Road near the Mill Lake and Clear Lake Outdoor Centers where the new Nature Center will be constructed, and the crews are following the little orange tags he has put up, removing small trees and shrubs in the way, uprooting stumps, and cutting through deadfalls across the trails. Where there are steep slopes they have cut out and filled in, and occasionally put shoring timbers along the sides. Most of it is hard, physical work, but the crews seemed to be enjoying it, mostly because it is outdoors and in a beautiful setting, and they are doing an excellent job with the trails. Hodgson filled us in on how the rest of the work is proceeding. "You noticed that the county road crews have taken out that sharp curve on Pierce, where our entrance will be," he said. "Now as soon as the frost limitations are off, and we can get heavy equipment in, the contractor, who is doing our road and parking will start work. He estimates he can get the job done in about three weeks, if conditions are ideal, "After the road is in, then we can start work on building the center itself. The schedule calls for this to be completed in late fall. If that schedule is kept, and all our planning and funding do as expected, we can then open up to the public next spring." Most of the preliminary trail work, thanks to the CETA crews, will be done this spring, but the trails will not be in final shape for some time. "We're going to need a lot of wood chips, especially for some of the softer areas, and in the places where the trail crosses bogs, marshes, and wet areas, we will need some board walks. Funds for most of these are not available, but we've managed to get some lumber from the old Fort Custer buildings that were torn down, and have some money available to treat this with sealant. This means that we can bridge a few of the shorter wet spots, and at least get our bog trail ready. But we have one trail that needs extensive walkways, and this will have to wait until we get some more money." It's nice to see this work going ahead on Waterloo, and the new center and trails will be a major addition to the entire area. The center itself is a handsome design, and it will be placed on a hill overlooking a lake. The trails all emanate from this center, and spread out through the 600-acre tract which has been set aside as a nature preserve. It is in the same general area as the Mill Lake and Clear Lake Outdoor Centers, where groups, mostly school groups, come to spend a week or so to be given instruction and guidance in natural science. We will be following the project closely, and keeping you up-to-date on it as things happen, but it's nice to be able to report now that things are not only going along as projected, but thanks to the CETA crews, some portions are even ahead of schedule. And a special vote of thanks to the new Washtenaw Parks Commission director, Bob Gamble, for sharing the CETA crews for parks work all over the country. We understand that he also has some plans for opening up more of Park Lyndon this year, and as soon as that work gets on its way, we'll let you know about that, too. Now that the days are getting a little warmer, the itch to get out is getting stronger, so we thought you might like to know about some of the places to go, and the plans for them. Walking the trails in Waterloo the other day, I found a lot of skunk cabbage poking up through the wet spots, a lot of the trees were getting buds, and every once in a while you'd see a spot of green under the fallen leaves, where a violet or some other spring flower was starting to grow. So it won't be long now. Just have hope.
At (left) one of the CETA crews works on trails in Waterloo, under direction of Tom Hodgson (second from left); at right, entrance to the area on reconstructed Pierce Road.