Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Honey Creek Beach to Open in West Allis



Bradford Beach will soon have to compete with a new beach with similar levels of human feces in the water. The city of West Allis will open the Honey Creek Beach that will replace the failing county-run swimming pools, and allow citizens to bask in the peace and solitude found only near sewage-tainted waters. A recent study conducted by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has found that an unexpected level of human feces routinely flows through the Honey Creek, likely resulting from bad sewer pipes, but the levels are not unlike those seen at Milwaukee’s favorite summer lakefront beach, so West Allis officials plan on going ahead with their plans to create the Honey Creek Beach in State Fair Park.

Currently, the creek runs through underground culverts under State Fair Park, but the plan is to dam the water in the fair’s parking lot, and create an aesthetically pleasing concrete beach around the new lagoon. Some local residents have suggested the lagoon may be more of a cesspool, but they were told that to limit human feces in the creek may cost up to $12,000 per household to add new sewer pipes, and little protest has been voiced since.

A press release from the city of West Allis states, “The city wants to create a new destination for State Fair Park, since the ice rink and expo center have been complete disasters. The only thing on the grounds that has made any money is the RV park, and this will provide beachfront property for those people living out of their RVs.” In fact, one city planner has suggested a Honey Creek Beach Trailer Park for the remainder of State Fair’s only parking lot.

Neighborhood citizens who charge up to $25 tax-free to park State Fair patrons in their front lawns are excited about the loss of more parking spaces on State Fair grounds. Former state senator Tom Reynolds welcomes the decreased parking lot size so that he can collect more money for parking at his residence on 94th and Schlinger. “I may have lost my bid for re-election,” he stated in an interview, “but I can make big money if there’s no parking lot at State Fair. I’ll apply any money I make to my upcoming bid for the Presidency.”

While not all West Allis residents are aspiring as high as Reynolds, the new beach is seen as a good way to keep kids off the streets and close money-draining local pools. One Reynolds caliber idea is to relocate the Cool Waters slides from Greenfield Park to the new beach and rent wetsuits to beachgoers so that they can avoid side effects such as dysentery from the water itself. Excitement is growing in West Allis for this project because it is a land-locked inner-ring suburb with no natural beaches of its own. Local businesses see the project as an opportunity to tout West Allis as a leading community in the region, and move beyond the blue-collar bar-on-every-streetcorner stereotype that has plagued the city since its inception in the early 1900s.


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