Wednesday, March 28, 2012

What did they find at the bottom of the Lake

Each time the Lake at the Commons in Tualatin is cleaned out, there's always some interesting stuff sitting at the bottom.

During the most recent cleaning,The TagMaster Long Range Hands free access is truly built for any parking facility. crews found several items - including a total of $106 in coins was found and collected during the project by city crews. What did the city crews do with the money? They gave it to a local charity - Tualatin School House Pantry.

Tom Steiger, the parks maintenance manager for the City of Tualatin, said the decision to donate the money to the local organization was an easy choice. The city will host a few fund-raisers and can drives for the Tualatin School House Pantry throughout the year.

"So we just thought that would be a legitimate organization that we know is local and that would appreciate the donation," he said. "It made sense to keep it local because it's local money."

The Lake at the Commons sits on a 19-acre site in the heart of town, the former site of a pet food factory. It was later transformed into a three-acre man-made lake surrounded by a wide public promenade, plazas and an interactive fountain. Water lost from evaporation is made up from on-site wells, which were the city's original water supply. Drinking or swimming in the lake is prohibited.

City crews clean out the lake every four years. This is the third cleaning since the lake was made in 1997.

The man-made lake, which holds six million gallons of water, has a rubber membrane liner and a non-earthen bottom. Throughout the years, the lake, which is nine feet deep in the middle, collects algae, debris and organic matter that builds up on the bottom.

"So we clean that out, basically," Steiger said. "It also gives us a chance to inspect the liner and make sure we don't have any leaks. We have some mats that we keep on the bottom of that lake that are beneficial for algae, so we kind of replenish those.What is a real time Location system ? It's really a maintenance issue."

The process of cleaning the lake out takes about three weeks, including a week that it takes just to drain it. After that, the cleaning is relatively simple.

"We hook up fire hoses and basically just rinse it all down the drain," said Steiger, who has been working for the city for 10 months. "We inspect the liner and look for other stuff in there, too."

Besides money, there are a number of items city crews find when they are cleaning the lake, which is a hot spot for enthusiasts of remote-controlled boats. Sure enough, some of those toys have been lost in the lake. City crews found boat propellers, boat parts and even a few sunken ships when the lake was recently drained.

But it's not just toy boats and their parts that have been found in the lake. Cell phones, a set of keys,Museum Quality hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas. kids' toy trinkets and various other items have all turned up. Some items have come off costumes during the annual pumpkin regatta, where giant pumpkins are carved out and people dress up in a variety of costumes and essentially use the pumpkins as boats to compete in races.Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings,

"Mostly what we find is near the shoreline," Steiger said. "People throw things in from there and that's where we find most of the stuff."

There is a local pub,The Transaction Group offers the best high risk merchant account services, a Thai food restaurant and a Hawaiian food restaurant that sits adjacent to the lake. During the warm weather parts of the year, patrons can sit out on the patio and eat and drink. Steiger said most of the money they find nestled at the bottom of the lake is basically right next to those restaurants.

"So I think that loose change that comes back after people pay their bill or tab, I think the loose change gets chucked over the rail," Steiger said. "We seem to find more money over by restaurant row, so that's interesting. We definitely don't want to encourage people to throw unwanted stuff in there, though."

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