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Read the press release here.

Water Restored to Sunset Park Playground Sprinkler

By Alan Neuhauser | August 9, 2012 1:08pm

SUNSET PARK — Sweet relief!

A playground sprinkler and water-fountain that had left frustrated Sunset Park visitors hanging out to dry since the start of the city's hottest summer on record were turned back on late last month.

Playground sprinklers offer one of the only outlets for New Yorkers stay cool and avoid soaring electricity bills during the summer, and they must be turned on anytime temperatures climb above 80 degrees.

"It gets spritzed all around my face and it makes me colder," 5-year-old Tehila Wilbur, visiting the park with her mother Thursday afternoon, said with a broad smile. She was one of about a dozen children, ages 4 to 7, playing in the spray of water that shot from the playground's sun-shaped sprinkler.

The spray shower and water fountain on the Sunset Park playground had remained shut off for months as adjacent walking paths and a nearby soccer field underwent multi-million-dollar renovations. That project was completed at the end of July, Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez's office said.