Upgrades being made to OC Parks

Upgrades are being made to parks in Oconee County; High Falls and South Cove County Parks on the shores of Lake Keowee and just ten-miles from the Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River, Chau Ram County Park. These three parks offer a total of 216 campsites, which are prized for their proximity to whitewater rafting, lakes, mountains and waterfalls. Oconee County Parks, Recreation and Tourism Director Phil Shirley says improvements are planned at all three parks. “We are doing a number of things to make some upgrades. We have done some upgrades recently at South Cove. We are also re-doing the multi-use courts, we are going to have some tennis and pickelball courts at South Cove. We have several restrooms; this is not a popular project until you have to go to the restroom, so we have restroom projects at Chau Ram and at High Falls. These needed to be upgraded so that we are ADA accessible and provide the right access. We also have a couple of picnic shelters that were built when the lakes were built so they are showing some age. We have a couple of hundred thousand people that come through our parks every year, so when you have that kind of use, we want to try our best to replace them as we move along so that we don’t get to the point of having so much that is falling apart that we have to address all at one time, so we are going to replace some restrooms and a couple of shelters. We have some expansion plans too that just depends on how we can get some funding together in the next couple of years.” Upgrades are currently underway and should be completed in the next few months.