By Chris Brown

Rough timeline soon

City working aggressively to get recreation facilities open, says Merrick Brown

Jun 16, 2020 | 12:13 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The city’s director of emergency management says the city is working aggressively to get city recreation facilities open as quickly as possible but isn’t able to give much in the way of a timeline.

Merrick Brown outlined a four-stage approach the City of Medicine Hat takes to reopen things like the swim area at Echo Dale and the Family Leisure Centre.

“It is quite more difficult to actually open up than it is to shut down,” said Brown. “There’s really a four-stage approach when we actually have to open something up, given the fact that it’s a pandemic we’ve actually had to add another item on there which is the sector-specific guidelines.”

It starts with the guidelines from Alberta Health Services, then comes developing the plans, re-hiring staff and lastly making the facility functional and safe for staff and public.

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He said the city understands the desire for the facilities to be open and also thanks the public for its patience as the process moves along.

“We are aggressively working on these re-opening plans,” said Brown. “Ever since this came about last Tuesday, we set forth with this. Looking at those sector specific guidelines, this week it’s going to our executive leadership team on re-opening plans on this one. So, we understand the desire for all of these to open up.”

Brown hopes to be able to provide a rough timeline within the next week.

Due to the complexity of the public health guidelines, Echo Dale and the FLC are will be among the last facilities to open.

“[Echo Dale] is not like an outdoor pool or an indoor pool where we can really closely control the number of people that are entering and exiting,” said Brown. “So, it presents just another complexity that we have to consider.”

Flow rates on the South Saskatchewan River currently sit at around 620 cubic metres per second and use of the river by the public is still discouraged, however little projected rainfall in the mountains should keep levels manageable over the next week.