Suds threaten Memorial Fountain

By Kate Hayden

khayden@charlescitypress.com

It may have seemed like clean fun, or at least a good Snapchat story to pranksters scouting the area on Tuesday night, but to volunteers tasked with maintaining the Memorial Park fountain centerpiece, the growing wall of suds were no joke.

It’s the first suds of the year, but the damage soap can do to the pumps may mean it becomes too expensive to maintain a fountain, volunteers said.

“Another day like today, it could be the end of it,” Dick Diest said as he combed the water with his net, scooping out globs of soap. “We won’t be able to afford to run it anymore. We just try to go as long as we can. That’s hard to do when you have vandalism done to it.”

The park is run by volunteers through the City Improvement Association, which hires Diest to maintain the fountain. Diest and Memorial Park Chair Janet Dunkel spent about an hour cleaning out the fountain and it’s walls, stepping through the suds on the pavement. Once out of the fountain’s way, the suds will just have to sit until they dissipate. Vandals didn’t leave behind a bottle or box to tell what kind of soap it was.

The fountain has had it’s fill of soap over the years.

“This is a frequent thing,” volunteer Kay Diest said. “It doesn’t take long. If they drop soap in the end, it goes through the filter and up on the end (of the walls). It’s the worst it’s been.”

“It’s very unfortunate what this does. I don’t know if the kids or whoever happened to do this understand, it really strains the pumps, and keeping pumps repaired, the cost is high,” Dunkel said.  “Hopefully, it will be the first and only one this year.”