Resident Vivian Olds took advantage of the Public Participation session at the recent Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaDTC) Town Council meeting to ask Councillors to approach the All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council to fund a water feature on Smalltown seafront.
“In my role as a volunteer at the Smalltown Information Centre (SIC) I’m often asked by visitors where the sea is and I have to tell them that although we have a beach we don’t have any water.
Many years of neglect by both SaDTC and Sadgebore District Council saw the loss of both our Marine Lake and our Boating Pool and now there’s nowhere for children to obtain water for their sand castle moats.
Nearby Easton-under-Water has a Marine Lake and an incredibly popular Splash park for children and I think Smalltown would benefit greatly from something similar.
We hear a lot of talk from Councillors about ways to improve the High Street, with many ideas for spending vast sums of money to benefit businesses, but facilities for visitors are ignored. The best way to get people into Smalltown would be to give them a reason to visit in the first place and the availability of water would go some way to achieve this.”
Headmistress and Town Mayor Kelsey Dullard thanked Vivian for her lovely idea and suggested that Councillors add it to the agenda for further discussion at a Town Unimprovements Committee meeting.
Speaking after the meeting, SaDTC, Sadgebore District Councillor and Somerset Cuonty Councillor Squire Teflon said “I reject the idea that my councils have neglected the water facilities in Smalltown. We recently saw the competition of the new toilet facilities, funded by Sadgebore. The refurbishment included a shower facility on the outside of the SIC building. You can have an awful lot of fun in a shower.”
Smalltown’s Boating and Paddling Pool was demolished by Sadgebore in 2010, after the council announced that due to a lack of money they were unable to fund the cost of cleaning out the accumulated mud and silt from the structure, which had been donated to the town by a local family. Instead Sadgebore spent £9,400 to remove it.
Easton-under-Water’s Marine Lake reopened to the public following a scheme to remove the 30,000 tonnes of mud which had built up. The work to drain the lake, which is some 30,000 times the size of Smalltown’s Boating pool, cost £300,000 to dredge.