News Roundup #12
This shouldn't be the kind of thing that is so rare it requires a celebration, but each month I check Health Enforcement Orders on the provincial website, and only a handful of Recreational Facilities (pools) in Alberta were ordered shut in the last few months!
Non-critical violations are still common and recorded on a different part of the website, but after years of poor compliance and porous enforcement during the Pandemic, our industry is finally getting back to a place where more aquatic facilities are a safe place to swim because the bad actors are being caught.
In other news, this is not a political newsletter, but - since I last published a newsletter on July 9, 2024 - a US Presidential candidate was shot in an assassination attempt, and the other just resigned from the contest, so this is proof just how much can transpire in one busy summer week.
Let's get into it.
Teen sisters die after being pulled from Coney Island water
If it wasn't bad enough that two young women fatally drowned hours after lifeguards went off duty at public beaches in New York, 24 hours after this incident two other teenagers had to be rescued, and all of this comes within two weeks of two other young men fatally drowning. This is not a small issue.
Pool inflatables causing 'big issue' in P.E.I. National Park
At beaches on Prince Edward Island, Parks Canada is reporting that over half of surf lifeguard & Canadian Coast Guard rescues relate to pool inflatables. The problem has been growing steadily since 2019. In my opinion, the photogenic nature of these inflatables for social media posts on places like Instagram - did you see the Chick-Fil-A inflatable I mentioned last week? - is to blame.
How a jar of salsa led to a costly pool cleanup in Needham
A number of years ago, I wrote an article for PoolPro magazine about the cost of broken glass in commercial swimming pools (there's also a video discussion on YouTube.) I wrote this article precisely because I've had numerous calls from pool operators receiving pushback from management: do we really need to close and drain the pool for broken glass?!
In fact, yes. Pieces of broken glass in high velocity water don't mix when it comes to swimmer safety.
So I really appreciated the transparency with which the Town of Needham (outside Boston, MA) communicated with the community about the costs associated with a broken jar of salsa on the pool deck. Via multiple Facebook posts (#1, #2, and #3 including another near miss with a glass lemonade bottle) the municipality is working hard to educate everyone about the risks of broken glass.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Swimming Pool in Fall River closed due to vandalism
This pool also recently closed due to broken glass, but no further details were provided. I clicked on this link in my Google News Alerts because this is the infamous pool in Fall River, Massachusetts where - in 2013 - a Black woman named Marie Joseph fatally drowned and her body was underwater in cloudy/grey water for two days while the facility was actively in use by bathers and supervised by lifeguards.
If you've taken the Certified Pool Operator (CPO) class with me, you've seen this video. It's a heartbreaking story.
Diageo Offers Enhanced Community Access to Swimming Pool for Dublin 8
Aquatic facilities are always asking me how they can find more sponsors for public swims or new equipment. Yes, it's good to look at small businesses within your community, but sometimes it may be necessary to look further afield at brands with bigger budgets. Proving that donations can come from just about anywhere, the multinational alcohol beverage company Diageo, who owns Guinness, is sponsoring 600 pool memberships for children at a pool in Dublin, Ireland. That's a big donation for the pool, but likely only pennies for Diageo.
This past week I taught a Certified Pool Operator (CPO) class via Zoom. It's taken me a number of years to learn this, but I no longer to set any other deadlines or projects during a CPO class week; there's just not enough time to get anything else done.
To wit, both of these YouTube videos were finalized last week, and I'll be working on recording & editing new content next week. Please consider subscribing to the YouTube Channel to support this new area of education.
The latter video is a 2020 POOLaide Webinar. If you weren't following us in 2020, we conducted a series of free webinars from March - May when many poolies were laid off and facing economic uncertainty. I'm going back in 2024 to update all of the resources & links associated with each recording to ensure they are still useful.
Thanks as always for being here!
Katie Crysdale
Lakeview Aquatic Consultants Ltd.