New trails ready at Naperville's Sportsman's Park
Red warning signs alerting anyone around Sportsman's Park in Naperville to the presence of lead contamination are ready to come down after a two-year project to clean up the soil.
The entire 27-acre park will open to the public for the first time Saturday, Oct. 3, featuring new paths with views of ponds and updated trapshooting stations that opened late last year.
"It's going to look completely different than what it was before," Ray McGury, Naperville Park District executive director, said about the park at 735 S. West St.
In a roughly $5 million project that began in 2013, the park district hired contractors to clean up remnants of lead pellets used at the park's three trapshooting ranges until the pellets were banned in 1998.
According to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the work included treating the soil with a special chemical to prevent any lead from leaching deeper into the ground and then removing the top 18 inches and taking it to an appropriate landfill.
The park district has been seeking approval - in the form of a letter - from the EPA that no further remediation is necessary on the site. McGury said the letter has not yet arrived, but it's on its way and the district has the EPA's blessing that Sportsman's Park is safe and lead-free.
Soil cleanup means 7 acres of the park that had been closed now will be accessible with roughly a mile of trails beginning at 9 a.m. Oct. 3 when the park district hosts a grand opening ceremony.
"It's going to broaden the use for the community," park board President Mike Reilly said about the new trails and Sportsman's Park improvements. "It'll be good to get it done."
Other highlights of Sportsman's Park work include accessible shooting stations and walkways that opened last December, energy-efficient sports lighting, accessibility improvements to the clubhouse, a parking lot built with permeable pavers, an asphalt driveway to replace a former gravel road and restoration to natural areas where invasive trees were removed before soil work began.
Funding for the project came from the park district and from the city of Naperville's special events and cultural amenities fund because the park district leases the land from the city.