DORCHESTER - The village of Dorchester has a new way to cool off for the remainder of the summer, and many more summers to come.

This past week, the Dorchester Community Foundation Fund unveiled a brand new splash pad in the city park.

The Community Foundation Fund held a Splash Pad Open House on Sunday afternoon, where a few hundred people came out to enjoy the new water features.

"The response from the community has been overwhelming," Dorchester Community Foundation Fund chairman Dale Hayek said. "It's been really, really good."

Hayek says fundraising for the project began back in 2017. There's still one phase to be completed. The final phase is the most expensive - it will include four additional water features.

The splash pad is 45 feet wide and 75 feet long.

The Community Foundation Fund is in the process of raising an additional $30,000 to finish the final phase of the project. Until then, Dorchester has a wide variety of water features to enjoy now, especially with the more extreme heat rolling in this week.

"This is pretty much the steroids of all the splash pads," Hayek said. "We knew we'd never have a pool, or maintain a pool or the cost associated with that. So, we wanted to maximize (the splash pad) as much as we could with the square footage and kind of grow into it."

Dorchester isn't the only community in the area with a new splash pad. Beatrice and Plymouth each opened new pads earlier this summer.