Popular park fountain re-opens June 15

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Just in time for 100-degree temperatures, a popular splash fountain near Downtown Austin will reopen to Austin residents after months of costly problems.

Austin's Parks and Recreation Department has set a goal to open the Liz Carpenter Fountain in Butler Park as soon as June 15.

Officials with the parks department, facing public outcry, said they will perform "hyper-chlorination" and provide daily maintenance to the spray heads to try and keep the fountain open during the summer.

The project to repair the fountain took six months and cost $40,000.

"It's extra maintenance hours, maintenance just trying to clean out the system, and provide additional maintenance hours for hyper-chlorination," said Tom Nelson of the Austin Parks and Recreation Department.

There are 101 jets that spray water toward the sky. Those jets collect debris, and will take 30 minutes each to clean on a rotating basis each day, Nelson said.

"The taxpayers invested a lot of money in this fountain," said Jennifer Hill Robenalt, a longtime friend of Liz Carpenter. "So we have to fix it."

Robenalt said there are more than 760 members of a Facebook Group she started to help save the fountain.

Parks Department officials said they will also close the fountain up to two days a week to clean the 6,000 gallon holding tank for the water.  Officials said they would post times of closure on their website.