DAVENPORT, Iowa — The beach at Davenport's West Lake Park reopens after years of cleanup.
Families, kids and adults were enjoying warm sunny weather and cooling off in the water on the Memorial Day weekend.
All four of the park's lakes closed in 2019 for extensive cleaning, which involved draining, dredging and construction work costing nearly $4 million.
"We've got a total of nine retention ponds now surrounding our four main lakes," West Lake Park manager JB Graham said. "We had about 145,000 cubic yards of silt removed from the lakes."
New to the beach are two large inflatables floating on the water, which had slides and obstacles.
"These inflatables are really nice — I'm really glad they added them," 14-year-old Noah Altman said. "Really nice day out here, I'm just so glad I could be here."
Families and friends enjoyed time together, and are looking forward to returning in the future.
"Maybe every single day!" 8-year-old Eli said. "Yeah! Same thing with me the whole summer," 8-year-old Addison said.
Starting June 3, the beach will be open daily from 12:00 to 7:00 p.m. It is planned to stay open until August 13. If staffing allows, the beach will remain open on weekends through Labor Day.