An elaborate water park is being planned for a region that receives just 8 inches of rain a year. In Mesa, Ariz., real-estate developer Richard Mladick convinced local business leaders and voters to support the Waveyard, a 125-acre water park offering surfing, kayaking, a scuba lagoon and snorkeling pond.
If plans proceed, the Waveyard will be located about 15 miles east of Phoenix, the nearby rivers of which have experienced near-record low measurements this year. The water park would use roughly 100 million gallons of groundwater a year—about as much as area golf courses. Project organizers say the water won’t come from Mesa’s water supplies. Instead, they’ll draw it from a well with elevated levels of arsenic—water unsuitable for drinking. The Waveyard plans to build a treatment plant to make that water safe for swimmers.
Developer Mladick said that, with the water park, he wanted to create the kind of environment he remembers while growing up in Virginia and surfing in Morocco, Brazil, Hawaii and Indonesia.
“I couldn’t imagine raising my kids in an environment where they wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow up being passionate about the same sports that I grew up being passionate about,” he told the Associated Press.
Northern Nevada, home to Wild Island Family Adventure Park (approved during the late ‘80s and ‘90s drought) and the Grand Sierra Resort (which plans a 150,000 square feet indoor water park to open in 2009), averages around 7 inches of precipitation per year.