Denton city officials are still assessing damages to a trademark slide at Water Works Park after a woman rammed her car into it over the weekend.

Police believe the woman, 29, who survived with head injuries, may have been drunk early Saturday when she ran her vehicle off Hartlee Field Road, plowed through a fence and slammed into the yellow speed slide.

DRC/Gary Payne

The lower part of the speed slide at Water Works Park was damaged when a driver crashed through the fence and slammed into it late last week. Denton police plan to subpoena medical records from the Dallas hospital where she was treated and released Saturday to determine whether to file charges for driving while intoxicated, said Officer Ryan Grelle, a department spokesman.

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An official accident report had not been released Thursday, and the woman’s identity was not available.

Denton police plan to subpoena medical records from the Dallas hospital where she was treated and released Saturday to determine whether to file charges for driving while intoxicated, said Officer Ryan Grelle, a department spokesman. Officers did not perform field sobriety tests because of the woman’s injuries, but Grelle said they reported smelling alcohol at the scene.

Replacing the entire slide could cost $450,000, but city officials say it’s too soon to know if that will be necessary.

“We have significant damage,” said Emerson Vorel, the city’s parks and recreation director. “We’ve contacted the manufacturer in California [and] they’re going to have to fly some staff out here to examine the slide and assess it.”

Vorel didn’t know when the assessment would occur but said the slide probably wouldn’t be ready for the park’s sneak preview day on May 16. The park opens for the season on May 23.

A passer-by called police about 3:40 a.m. Saturday after seeing a bleeding woman lying beside a vehicle at the park, Grelle said. No one else was in the car at the time of the accident, and the park was vacated, he said.

The woman was taken by air ambulance to a Dallas hospital, and the car was towed from the scene, Grelle said.

Vorel said the accident broke off the base of the slide and damaged an outer fence and a crowd-control fence inside the park, along with several trees.

The incident is the latest in a string of misfortunes involving the slide that date to the opening of the water park, a $13.5 million joint venture between the city and the Denton school district.

Drainage problems kept the slide from opening with the rest of the park in June 2003.

In summer 2007, the parents of a 10-year-old girl said their daughter needed surgery after suffering internal injuries on the slide, which carries riders about 50 feet down into a trough of increasingly deeper water.

City officials defended the slide’s safety but eventually closed it near the end of the 2007 season. Officials later acknowledged the closure came after the Canadian manufacturer, Whitewater West Industries Ltd., alerted them that the slide’s slope failed to meet the company’s specifications. Tests done after the girl’s injury revealed deviations in the slope of the slide along its 80-foot-long base, records show.

The city spent about $4,900 correcting the problem before the park — and slide — opened for the first 2008 season preview. But officials continued to say the slide was never dangerous.

The speed slide is one of four large slides at the 17-acre water park, located at Loop 288 and Sherman Drive in northeast Denton. The park also features a children’s pool and a tubing river, among other attractions.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com .