Wood chips replace rubber surface for one La Crosse playground

As kids are going back to school for another year, school and outdoor safety is a major concern for area parents.

One city park in La Crosse has a made a change in its playground, to replace surfaces that aren’t as popular as they used to be. The playground at Crowley Park along Campbell Road is now covered with wood chips, instead of rubber mulch that took the place of blacktop years ago.

A local group called Safer Playspaces and Community Environments, or SPACE for short, campaigned for the new surface at Crowley. Mackenzie Mindel of the La Crosse city council says rubber options, including a substance called Pour-in-Place, are now out of favor.

Mindel attended a news conference at Crowley on Wednesday, “to finally celebrate the unveiling of our wood chips, instead of the stinky, gross, black chips that used to get stuck on our feet and all over our kids’ shoes and skin.”

The city budgeted $100,000 for replacement of the Crowley playground, next to Emerson School. Backers of the wood chip solution cited studies showing that rubber chips tend to absorb too much heat, raising the temperature on playgrounds.