Maricopa County to add new public safety dock at Lake Pleasant
Mar 14, 2019, 4:12 AM
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PHOENIX — The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved plans for a new dock and boathouses at Scorpion Bay Marina at Lake Pleasant Regional Park on Wednesday.
Maricopa County and the Arizona Game and Fish Department will pay almost $900,000 for their construction on the southwest corner of the marina.
“Today the county verified that we would be participating and granting funding to help fund a new dock at the Scorpion Bay Marina,” Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Wednesday.
“We found that there is a lot of people utilizing Lake Pleasant, and this is a way to provide a little more infrastructure to public safety in that park.”
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The additions will only be used by the county, the Game and Fish Department, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Maricopa County Parks and Recreation Department as they manage the lake.
“We were finding out that as the park continued to mature, we found out that when it comes to public safety, some of the activities that were occurring was occurring right next to the Scorpion Bay Marina, where you had quite possibly people misbehaving, or DUIs being processed,” Hickman said.
“The area where it was occurring was right next to the concessionaire, so I don’t think a lot of families want to see that. So now we’re going to move that part and build a new marina that’s a little bit closer to the land and little bit further away from the general public.”
Hickman said the new dock will allow space for Coast Guard boats that could park there if they needed to be on scene for an accident.
He said that as the number of the lake’s visitors rise, it’s important to keep safety precautions like these in mind.
“There’s usually a general rise, especially when the economy is going well, people tend to go out and utilize our parks more, and the Lake Pleasant Park is one of our top performers when it comes to attendance and use,” Hickman said.
“And it’s extremely large with a whole lot of water, so we just think that this is a way to participate in the growth factor we think is going to occur at Lake Pleasant for the next several decades.”
He said construction companies are currently bidding on the project, and the county will be unsure when to expect the project to be finished until it chooses one.
KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Kevin Fleischman contributed to this report.
