DUBLIN, Ga. — If you're driving passed the Southern Pines Water Park, you'll see there's no water in the lazy river nor on the slides. The Dublin-Laurens County Recreation Authority says it will remain this way, at least for this summer.
In May of 2019, the Southern Pines Water Park opened to the public. and Recreation Authority Brian Mallette says they had 1,300 people show up on the opening day.
Under new state rules, that wouldn't happen this summer. "You would basically be limiting that to about 80 people coming to the water park right now."
He says the gates will remain closed in 2020 because they don't think they could follow the water park rules ordered by Governor Brian Kemp.
He says the biggest reason is that the park has only one body of water.
"The lazy river ties into where the slides come in and then the slides fall into the pool area. By the social distancing guidelines, there's no way you can social distance in a lazy river or on a slide basically," he says.
This is just one guideline listed in Governor Kemp's executive order. Others include increasing the space between workers and patrons and requiring employees to wear face coverings at all times.
Mallette says the parks normal capacity of the park is 490 people, but since they have 20 staff members. The new rules would limit them to 60 customers at a time.
"If we open up, and every day we're only allowed to let 60 people in, you have 1,300 people show up for one day, you just made a bunch of people mad. Do you want to continue to make those people mad throughout the summer?" he says.
Mallette adds that this was a decision made by the entire recreation board and they'll be excited to open back up in summer 2021.
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