Wild Rivers Water Park Bubbles Back Up in Irvine

Tweens looking for a place to escape their parents, parents looking for a place to dump off their tweens and creepers who like ogling wet young things, rejoice: Wild Rivers returns to Irvine. But it won't be in the same place . . .

(Think: the other side of the freeway.)

In between protecting pervert administrators, putting the screws to public workers and cutting critical services for the poor, County of Orange officials have been working behind the scenes to bring back Wild Rivers, which closed after 27 years last summer when the Irvine Co. decided not to renew the water park's lease next to Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre.

Ah, but the county held onto 17 acres of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station after acquiring the base from the Navy for a doomed commercial airport--and despite the city of Irvine later annexing and designing most of the acreage for the Orange County Great Park, which is to be ringed by commercial and residential development, should that ever be built again in California.

Today, the Orange County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a lease with Wild Rivers to construct and operate a new water park on the 17 acres of land, with a projected opening in gray May 2014.