The upgrades to Swift Current's Memorial Park are continuing this week.

After Go Green Friday refreshed some landscaping last week, parts of the park have been ripped up this week for a new irrigation system to the toon of around $70,000.

"It was and currently is a manual irrigation system so we had to have a staff member report there every day to water during the daytime hours," Michael Newell, park manager for the city of Swift Current, said. "Now it will be an automatic irrigation system."

Riverdene Park, Elmwood Park, and Riverside Park also have manual irrigation systems currently and the City wants to switch those over in the near future.

"So that we can use staff time, because they're mainly student positions, but we can use that time more constructively and efficiently," he said. "When you water during the day verse watering at night we lose a lot of the water to evaporation."

The work that began on Monday by Medicine Hat's Elevation Irrigation & Landscaping was supposed to be done last year but due to the pandemic, it was punted to this year.

"The contractor during the pandemic said he would hold his price over if we were to do the project in 2021 and in the interim between then the price of the materials has gone up," he said. "We were able to keep the 2020 price and get it done in 2021."

According to Newell, the irrigation work is expected to be completed by Friday night.