Swimming pools likely won’t open this summer
The AJC just posted these two articles about metro Atlanta swimming pools. Due to the drought, it’s very likely that most won’t be able to open.
They don’t give specific numbers, only that pools won’t open “if the state’s severe drought doesn’t ease”.
Under current water restrictions, swimming pools can’t be filled. Unless we get a lot of rain in the next few months, I can’t imagine that they’ll ease the restrictions. This would be quite a shame, as our 4 and 2 year olds had a great time swimming last summer.
January 5th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Mickey - I’m sure your children won’t mind the loss of a community swimmin pool when you explain to them that it is more important to send hundreds of billions of gallons downstream to maintain the oyster industry in the Apalachicola Bay.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Coca Cola company and Stone Mountain Park, near my house, had to cancel the “Snow Mountain” attraction event this past Christmas, because several million gallons of water would have been needed to produce the giant pile of snow for a month. Also the new water park at Stone Mountain was halted in construction as well.
January 5th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I live in a metro area neighborhood with a swimming pool that is well used during the summer months. I’m looking for ideas of what we could offer our neighbors, if the pool is not allowed to be operated.
The first thing that comes to mind is having more socials, but I’m afraid that the socials would put too much of a strain on the grass of our common area (parks) and will not survive.
Any ideas?
January 5th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Here’s an idea, let the kiddies skateboard in them!
January 5th, 2008 at 10:39 am
This raises a question I’ve been pondering… will Atlanta’s White Water amusement park be exempted from operating under drought restrictions? This appears to be the case, as their website is advertising 2008 season tickets and claims to re-open for summer business this May.
-st
January 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am
ST - Excellent point. I may try to call them on Monday and see what the deal is.
January 6th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
RichS — instead of blaming oysters as you and many others are wont to do, try these on for size:
Mickey - I’m sure your children won’t mind the loss of a community swimming pool when you explain to them that it is more important that Atlanta has had uncontrolled growth for the past ~20 years with no thought for the water that those people will drink.
or how about this one?
Mickey - I’m sure your children won’t mind the loss of a community swimming pool when you explain to them that it is more important that Sonny Perdue canceled the planned reservoirs because they were “pork”.
You see, scape-goats are a matter of perspective…
January 7th, 2008 at 12:07 am
AndrewS - your hindsight is crystal clear. Truly amazing.
Regardless of what AndrewS would have done four or ten or twenty years ago, we are where we are now. That means we prioritize the water we have based on reality - not based on what AndrewS would have done in the past. Personally I prioritize the millions of people in metro Atlanta above the few oyster fishermen in Apalachicola Bay.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Andrew S - Also since you keep blaming Atlanta use for the water situation, I will remind you of the math I did recently on this forum (under the Lanier rises story). During the months of June - November 2007 which is the time period that lake Lanier was dropping, for every gallon used in the Atlanta metro area, fourteen gallons were sent downstream. In other words - 6.6% to Atlanta, 93.4% downstream. If Atlanta metro was using ZERO water, the lake would still have been dropping like a rock. But it’s still our fault right???
January 7th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Uncontrolled growth in Atlanta is a problem. Lack of reservoir planning is a problem. Would more reservoirs help? You betcha. But the reason the Lanier is so low right now is lack of rain and excesive water releases by the corps.
Closing pools for the summer is NOT the answer. There are 4,392 public pools in Atlanta. By conservative calculations, taking an average of 75,000 gallons per pool, that’s 369.9 million gallons in all of those pools.
The Gatorade plant on the southside uses over 70 million gallons of water per month. So essentially the Gatorade plant uses more water in 6 months than ALL the water contained in every public pool in metro Atlanta.
And the pool industry is not suggesting we drain and refill every public pool. We only need to top them off from time to time to keep them operating.
So our water usage is ridiculously small in comparison to big business. Yet we are being singled out and penalized while other industries thrive.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Could we fill the pools with Gatorade?
January 7th, 2008 at 11:38 am
10 or 20 years ago? Perdue was inaugurated in 2003.
The proportions that Atlanta uses is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Atlanta mtero. area countries KNOW how much is released and should know how much they use. They should have made their plans accordingly like some counties but they didn’t.
So why aren’t you blaming George Carlos? He was using 440,000 gallons a month. That’s one guy and he could have filled several swimming pools.
“A few oystermen in Apalachicola Bay”?? Try $134 million a year.
Your opinion is only one of many RichS and that water is not yours to do with what you will, but belongs to everyone, including downstream users. U.S. taxpayer money paid for that reservoir in the first place and ALL U.S. taxpayers have a say in how it is used, that includes people in Florida and the rest of the country. In other words, SUCK UP AND DEAL WITH IT.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
If you figure it takes 650,000 gallons to fill an olympic size pool, and 50,000 gallons to maintain it per day, for 120 days that’s a total of 6,650,000 gallons.
Now, figure an average discharge of 1000cf/s for the last few weeks, that’s 7480 gallons/second. That’s 14 minutes, 50 seconds of flow per olympic pool.
How many such pools are there in Metro Atlanta. Just public pools, mind you. Let’s say there are 200 (total, some are bigger than olympic sized, some are smaller, it works out).
That’s just the tiniest bit over two full days of flow.
So, for the cost of two days of discharge from Lake Lanier, you could fill and maintain the swimming pools for the summer. This assumes the low rate of discharge we’re seeing lately.
I’m not saying that’s a good idea or a bad idea, but it puts some perspective on it.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
The city is saying that the citizens will have to bear the pain before businesses do. This will backfire, since the citizens vote.
Any company (gatorade) whose primary product is water should not be located in the southeast or southwest. It’s a grossly inefficient use of water. Full stop. $134 million isn’t much money, either, balanced against the economic impact of white-collar residents moving out of Atlanta when they decide that the quality of life in the region has dropped below acceptable levels due to water shortages. The decline of Apalachicola Bay is an ecological disaster regardless, and simply demonstrates that the region is living beyond its means.
There is a supply/demand policy that works here. Define a “quality of life” water allotment per household charged at the current (low) rates such that the poor and middle class aren’t (only slightly exaggerating here) killed off, and for use beyond that, for everyone including businesses, the (dramatically higher) market rate is charged. Gatorade, among others, leave town because they can no longer turn a profit. Those jobs are lost, but in the grand scheme, it is a better outcome for the city for reasons I mentioned above.
If the government wanted to go with a much more invasive policy, municipalities could study how many gallons of water per year are required to sustain any given job in the area, and simply boot out the companies with the worst ratios. Gatorade goes away (up to Michigan, where they need the jobs and have plenty of water), while the average office worker stays.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Andrew S is right (as usual). Metro Atlantans are the ones whining about all of this, but it is they who should have planned accordingly. US tax dollars did pay for the reservoir and it was never meant to be Atlanta’s sole source of drinking water. Deal with losing your pools. Do some of you people have any idea how most people in the world actually live?? Most don’t even have access to potable water, let alone swimming pools. You are way too spoiled if you find this to be a hardship you can’t deal with. You should teach your children that they can’t always have everything they want in life all the time. There are great lessons to be learned from this drought.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Some people seem to feel guilt for the plenty that we have, and resentment for anyone who doesn’t share their guilt.
Carol - if you feel so horribly about our situation being so much better than other places around the world, please donate to one of the feed the hungry organizations, or the multitude of other charities which try to raise others to our standard instead of trying to lower us to theirs.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Actually, Rich, I do donate and I volunteer my time overseas. I don’t feel guilty at all about us being so much better off. I am a Republican, and a capitalist, and I think we live in the greatest country in the world. However, I do feel that some Americans (not all, by any stretch of the imagination) are so spoiled that they see hardship where hardship doesn’t exist. Atlanta got itself into this mess, so Atlantans need to quite whining and gnashing their teeth over their perceived hardships due to the drought. Just as someone who gets himself into credit card debt because he can’t control his spending shouldn’t be bailed out, neither should Atlantans. It’s not really complicated.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Carol, you’re wasting your time. Atlanta represents everything that is wrong with American (although Las Vegas does a better job) in that its residents believe it can continue to metastasize forever, without nary a thought on whether it is sustainable. Now it is facing this massive drought and the water shortage ends up being everyone’s fault except their own. As it has been said, suck it up, deal with it and stop being a bunch of crybabies.
Rich, the point Carol was attempting to make is that going without swimming for a summer isn’t really that traumatic, compared to the travails of so many people in this world. She wasn’t trying to “lower” our standard of living as you claim, which is an idiotic, Rush Limbaugh-style argument. Your standard of living is being affected by freak weather and poor planning.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
rkolter,
I appreciate your comments, but your estimates are off.
Firstly, there are only a handful of Olympic sized pools pool in Atlanta. Olympic = 50 meters. Most are what developers like to call Jr. Olympic = 25 yards, less than half the size of a truly Olympic pool. A typical Jr. Olympic pool contains around 75,000 gallons.
According to the AJC article, there are 4,932 public pools in Atlanta. That’s including all the hotel/motel and apartment pools. These are typically smaller than a Jr. Olympic pool. Then you have some older pools that are larger than Jr. Olympic. So going with an average of 75,000 gallons per public pool is more realistic.
So if we use these figures, we have 369.9 million gallons of water in these pools. Again, a VERY small amount in comparison to the water being released from Lanier and used by big business.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
My personal experience tends to agree with Craig. The pool in our current subdivision in much larger than either of the past two we’ve lived near, and it’s only 75,000 gallons.
My next question: Say we have 370M gallons in the pools, as you suggest. How much water is used each week during the summer to keep them full? Just curious.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Carol and Sean,
This issue is not as simple as you would like to make it. It’s not just about some people who don’t get to swim. Swimming pools are very important to the economic, social, and recreational make-up of any metropolitan area, but particularly in the South. I state that only because it sounds from your posts that you don’t even live in Atlanta, so you may not understand that.
There is a quality of life issue, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Quality of life affects property values and tourism in real dollars. A lack of constructive recreational and socialiazation opportunities for youth can lead to increased violence, crime, and vandalism.
If pools are forced to remain closed and they are not properly maintained, they can turn into mosquito breeding health hazards for the community.
I agree there are lessons to be learned from this drought for sure. But one of them should not be that the pool industry should be exterminated, while other industries who use more water just have to reduce usage by 10%.
We recognize that we are in a water crisis, and we (as the pool industry) are prepared to make concessions to conserve water. We ask for fairness and reasonability in these concessions.
Completely shutting down our industry by not allowing to pools open is not fair and equitable. Other industries that use far more water than we do are allowed to operate with minimal reductions in usage.
If you’re a Republican, and a capitalist, then you should have no problem seeing that. Look at the water calculations. The water these pools use is quite literally a “drop in the bucket” compared to what big industry (Gatorade, Budweiser, Dasani, golf courses, etc.) uses.
I’m not saying that big business should pack up and leave. But they should share equally (percentage wise based on usage) in reduction of water usage. Is that not a fair request?
If they do that, the impact will be much more significant in water savings than closing all the pools.
We can still open pools for the summer and save water. There are many ways to do this. Residents can pay extra for water to be trucked in from areas not in the drought. We can shorten the length of the pool season by opening later and closing earlier, thereby cutting back on water usage. These are just a couple of ideas.
When you look at the options for making this work, there is no reason why pools cannot open this summer in Atlanta. It’s just a matter of getting the message to those in charge.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Mickey,
That’s a good question. It’s hard to say exactly how much water we’d need to keep these pool full, because many factors affect that: evaporation (which is a function of temperature and wind), splash out (which depends on pool usage), backwashing, leaking, and rain. But we can try to estimate using my knowledge and experience.
A typical pool could be expected to lose up to an 1″ of water in a hot week due to evaporation.
Splash out (which includes splashing and water carried out on our bodies) can vary widely depending on usage. But let’s say that contributes another 1″ of water loss in a week for an average pool.
Backwashing uses pool water to clean the filters and ejects it to waste. This should be done at least once per week and uses about another 1″ of water.
Most pools leak a small amount, but that usually is assumed into the 1″ of loss due to evaporation. And let’s assume that we do not get ANY rain to help counter these effects.
So conservatively speaking, we’re losing up to 3″ of water a week in a typical pool with no rain. In a typical Jr. Olympic pool (dimensions 75′ x 35′), 1″ of water = 1,640 gallons. So we’re losing 4,920 gallons per week.
With a 14 week season (Memorial Day - Labor Day), that’s 68,880 gallons, about what the average pool contains.
Some customers open May 1 - September 30, so given this scenario:
22 week season = 108,240 gallons.
If every public pool opened May 1 - September 30…
4,932 pools x 108,240 gallons = 533,839,680 gallons.
That’s still less than what Gatorade uses in 8 months.
And that’s assuming every pool opens that long (which they don’t), and that we get NO rain (which we will get). So realistically speaking, we’re still talking about a small amount of water to open our pools this summer.
Mickey….
By the way, did you find out if White Water park is still planning on opening this summer?
January 7th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Thanks for the info — very interesting stuff.
I e-mailed White Water on Sunday, but haven’t heard back. I’ll give them another day or two and then try to call.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Craig, this is precisely what I’m talking about– you act as if not being able to swim is sort of catastrophe when it’s nothing of the sort. Again, as Carol has pointed out, there are people without access to clean drinking water, yet alone thousands of gallons of water used for recreation. The rains will return, Lanier will rise and the pools will reopen. Stop acting as if this is on the level of Darfur.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Thanks for the correction Craig. I accept 75,000 gallons as an acceptable average size for a pool, and a 22 week season, and 4932 pools in the area.
I have to dispute your water loss figures though. First, evaporation. Here’s an evaporation calculator:
http://www.grow.arizona.edu/Grow–GrowResources.php?ResourceId=208
Useful thing. Given the pan rate for Atlanta, about 0.15, you end up with 280 gallons or so a year in a Junior pool. Now, we don’t have that broken down by month, but the pool is open during the hottest weeks, and there’s a lot of splashing which throws water into the air and increases evaporation by increasing surface area. So, I’m going to say we lose that (at most) in one season.
280 gallons x 4932 = 1,400,000 gallons to Evaporation, total, for all the pools in the Atlanta area. It’s not that much.
BUT… Look at people getting out of swimming pools. They’re sopping wet. Water pours off them. Kids are the worst since they leap out of the pool and go running from the drains. Some water is recollected, but much is lost. I would estimate that a pool loses 3 inches a week to people getting out of it, and 1 inch a week to people splashing.
4 inches x 1640 = 6560 a week in loss due to human activity per pool.
6560 x 22 x 4932 = 711,750,000 or so due to human activity all season.
711,750,000 + 1,400,000 = 713,150,000 gallons lost all season.
713,150,000 + 75000(4932) = 1,083,050,000 gallons total used up.
That’s about One day’s average flow from Buford Dam, halving my original estimate.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Sean,
No one is acting as if this is on the level of Darfur. Your use of hyperbole here is neither persuasive nor amusing.
You’re trying to oversimplify this particular issue by saying we’re just a bunch of whiny people who don’t get to use our swimming pools. The issue is so much more complicated than that.
As I stated, there are REAL health hazards that occur when pool water is not properly maintained. That is VERY likely to happen if pools are not allowed to open this summer.
Check out this article from today’s AJC:
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/cobb/stories/2008/01/08/pool_0108.html
I attended a presentation this morning given by John Gormley, quoted in the article, and Director of the Fulton County Health Department. He reported that last year there were 9 confirmed cases of West Nile virus in Fulton county alone. There is apparently a new mosquito born virus now found in Europe with much higher mortality rates (40% and higher) than West Nile. Health officials are monitoring the situation, but if this virus makes it over here, Atlanta is a sitting duck with pools of stagnant water dotting the landscape everywhere.
This is the most critical of ALL the reasons why pools must be allowed to run this summer.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:22 am
rkolter,
No problem. I based my calculations on my own personal experience and knowledge of what I see when I’m running my pools. I did not have an evaporation calculator handy.
But thanks for sending that link. I’ll take a look at it.
By splash out, I meant both literally splashing and people getting in and out of the pool.
I think 4″ of water loss a week is overestimating, but I’ll go along with that as a possibility under the absolute worst conditions. We also did not take into consideration rain, which will come, God willing.
That will reduce the water loss.
It appears that you are adding total gallonage of all the pools PLUS replacement of lost water. But these pools are nearly full in their winterized state. Very few are empty (only some city pools do that). Most are perhaps a foot low at worst. So they only need to be topped off.
Even if they needed to be topped off an entire foot each, that would be 97M gallons of water approximately. So it would still be less than 1 day’s release from Lanier.
Also, keep in mind that all of this water usage that we are calculating is not happening at once, but over a 22 week period. So it’s stretched out to the point where it’s really not even noticeable.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Just as an aside, to any persons interested in the history of US government malfeasance:
The reason Georgia is so terribly plagued by mosquitoes (which has led to spates of West Nile in recent years) is because of a military covert operation between 1956-58 that spread thousands of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes across Savannah and Avon Park, Florida. The Army was attempting to test how far the mosquitoes would spread, and how many people they could then bite, as a potential bio-disease weapon to spread Yellow Fever.
These disease-carrying insects were residents of Atlanta thirty years ago. The northern migration of these buggers over time has created the accumulating health problems we now face each summer.
Thank your Big Brother, kids…
Here’s a link for further reading: http://books.google.com/books?id=y69nhn-9FqcC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=army+aedes+aegypti+savannah+1956&source=web&ots=cKaOxSnQIs&sig=a-2POvecH_3l223LSClf-avAEg8
st
Here’s a link
January 9th, 2008 at 3:27 am
correction: were NOT residents thirty years ago…
January 9th, 2008 at 9:54 am
And now those very same mosquitos are drinking all our water!!!!!!
January 9th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Mosquito bites are good for you. They build character. Specifically, a lumpy, itchy character.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
For those of you that think it is no big deal to shut the swimming pools down, then I am assuming that you do not work in the pool industry. Obviously you do not have to worry about losing your job, your company, and a way to make a living. Thousands are employed by the pool industry in GA, but I guess it is okay to take away their jobs. I’m sure Budweiser, Gatorade, etc would be whining if they were being forced to shut down and put all their employees on the chopping block. I have employees who count on their jobs in the pool industry to pay their monthly bills, support their families, buy groceries, pay for college, etc, but I guess they don’t matter. The pool industry is willing to make concessions like Craig indicated, including having a shorter swim season, having community pools not use their water features, ie. slides and mushrooms, limiting the hours that pools are open to swimmers, etc. Solutions can be found to reduce water consumption in the pool industry without putting it out of business. Why not find a more equal solution, which would include requiring other businesses to ease off on their water consumption also.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Whether you like it or not, JSmith and Craig, this is an issue of limits. The future is going to be about sustainability and whether you two like it or not, Atlanta is not sustainable. It doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks, either. Nature is going to sort this out and you can either act like spoiled children complaining about problems that should have been foreseen, or you can work the problem at hand.
As far as mosquitoes are concerned, these things can be combated without needing to fill the pools. Talk about a red herring! I’m getting the idea that Atlantans would drain anything to make sure they have their summertime luxuries.
JSmith, I know it must feel better to attempt to make me feel badly about the plight of the pool workers, but I’m not to blame for the drought. Pools are a luxury, and like most luxuries in a time of hardship, the people working in that field are going to lose their jobs. Do I like that? No. Can anything be done? No. Should Atlantans thought more carefully about their water problems before a major drought? Yes.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Sean is the smartest person commenting on the website (Aside from myself, of course :).
The whole mosquito thread is laughable. I work in public health. Trust me, mosquitos are not a health concern here. West Nile has killed fewer people here than hangnails.
This is my favorite, from Craig Sears: “A lack of constructive recreational and socialiazation opportunities for youth can lead to increased violence, crime, and vandalism.” Sure Craig, more swimming pools, less violence. Of course, it’s been scientifically validated. Makes perfect sense, right?
January 11th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Sean and Carol,
Where do you guys live anyway? Are you even in Atlanta?
From a number of the comments you’ve made on these posts, I don’t think so. It’s easy for you to analyze this situation from afar when it doesn’t affect you at all. In fact, you even seem to relish the difficult situation Atlantans are in.
This is not something caused by OUR fault. We (those of us posting here) are normal hard-working citizens than cannot control the weather nor the water policy. These are decisions we entrust to our government. Obviously, someone fell asleep at the wheel here to get us into this situation. Now we’re trying to make it right. But to do that, we need to have intelligent policy made by well-informed leaders.
When the current GA EPD drought management plan was being drafted 4-5 years ago, no one from the pool industry was involved. So pools got written into drought level 4 without any real thought or examination of the facts or implications. Now that this is the first time the drought plan has been enacted since it was drafted, there is massive confusion over how to interpret it. So it’s time to evaluate the plan and make suggestions to improve it.
But the “solution” you offer, of just “suck it up” and “deal with it,” implies that we somehow deserve this fate, which is totally absurd. Secondly, this kind of approach does not sovle any problem or help anyone.
Carol,
The fact that you work in public health only makes it all the more repugnant that you think West Nile is laughable. Can you explain that to the lady in this article?
http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5324625
The CDC has article after article on their website warning people of the dangers of West Nile and how to protect yourself from it. Although this disease usually does not become life threatening, people die from it every year! And even in milder forms, it can make people very sick and it is a significant risk for elderly people. That doesn’t sound “laughable” to me.
Anyone who spends time around teenagers has enough common sense to observe that when they are not preoccupied with something constructive or have healthy recreational outlets, they have a tendency to get into trouble, particulary in the summer when they have ample free time on their hands. If pools remained closed, thousands of teens will be without jobs this summer, giving them more free time. I don’t have a scientific study on that, but it doesn’t take a genius to put 2 and 2 together.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Just thought I’d share an interesting tidbit of info I just learned from a colleague of mine. The folks in NC are also experiencing a severe drought, as we are here in GA.
And like here, they have also banned construction of new swimming pools. However, interestingly enough they have not banned the filling of existing swimming pools because they recognize the importance of this.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Yes, I live in Atlanta. How many people did West Nile kill in Atlanta last summer?
And yes, I’ve been to downtown Atlanta. Guess what? Not that many inner-city poor people in Atlanta go swimming in the summer. It’s just not what they do. It is laughable that you are trying to make the argument that pools will keep youths from being violent.
If you want to argue that limiting pool use will put the pool industry out of business, fine. But really, the other arguments are indeed laughable.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Carol,
It’s interesting that you immediately assumed I was referring to violence and crime in the inner city. I’m referring to it everywhere.
A month or so ago, 6 or 7 kids from Northview High School in Duluth (a wealthy surburb) got busted for breaking into cars and stealing property. This problem is not isolated to the inner city. It’s everywhere.
And I’m not saying that pools will solve that problem, but it definitely gives them a place to go that they can recreate with friends in a healthy environment, as opposed to concocting dangerous or illegal ways to pass the time.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I am a mother of 3. My children stretch from elementary thru High School and the great thing about swimming pools is it serves as entertainment for all 3 ages. It does the same for our generation & our parents generation as well.
A swimming pool knows no specific age. It provides exercise, a place to gather with friends and a place to rehabilitate perhaps after an injury.
Swimming being non-weightbearing is the only form of exercise many can do. Many children count on swimming as an outlet for weight loss & general physical fitness. Without it many children will be retreating indoors for air conditioning, unhealthy snacks, TV & video games. Heavier children who find little success in other sports excel in summer league swim teams because you are weightless in a pool. It is only @ swim team they can be the star rather than bullied.
Most all families utilize a pool each summer because it benefits one personal budget. Many pay large annual homeowner fees for the purpose of having recreational facilities available.
Pools are the right place @ the right price to release energy, get necessary Vitamin D (provided by sunlight-etc.) Without it you’re looking at a monster financially. Kids will be draining their parents pocketbooks in search of alternate entertainment.
My point is know what you are doing. Know the magnitude of stripping children from this resource they have worked & looked forward to their entire school year. Know that it is bigger than just looking for an outlet for conserving water. Have we asked ourselves if we took one too many bath just because we had sore muscles & it felt good? Do we leave the water running to brush our teeth just because we’ve gotten in the lazy habit of doing so? Do we wash just a few items rather than a full load we need because we forgot to throw in Johnny’s basketball jersey in the last load? Almost every household could admit to such things & could make a change if we put our minds to it.
Many adults that would pass such laws to ban pools may be the very ones that justify their golf course still operating which requires large amounts of daily watering to upkeep. How about pools at fancy hotels, health/country clubs that have operated as usual through out this drought. Oh & many could not imagine their babies not having the utmost regular care @ the car spa. If we admit it, this is the reality & we should exhaust all other sources rather than penalizing our local children.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:48 am
[...] that parents are facing as they realize that pools might not be filled this summer. We’ve talked about this before, but this article shows that more people are starting to realize [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
“It’s just not what they do.” I am still laughing so hard I can hardly write this email. Who is “they” and are you trying to say “they” in the inner city are different then “they” in the outer city. Or maybe you should just say what you mean, that you think “they” are scared of the water and “they” don’t or can’t swim. You obviously have not been to any pool any time recently especially in Atlanta or Decatur. Where else do you think a family on a limited income can send their children or go with their children all day for a few bucks? These are the people who will suffer the most. What else are all the children all over metro atlanta going to do this summer? Never mind the tens of thousand of people employeed by this industry.
It is arbitrary and unjust that outdoor pools be restricted. What about swim teams? Let’s stop watering the football fields and see what happens.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:55 am
[...] the Level 4 drought that we’re currently in. Under the current restrictions, outdoor pools won’t be allowed to open this [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 10:05 am
Just browsing the GA EPD mandate on drought management, excerpt: 1d. Other Restricted Outdoor Water Uses
Follow Basic schedule for Levels One and Two: Listed Activities are prohibited for Levels Three and Four.
- Filling installed swimming pools (except when necessary for health care or structural integrity)
The worrying about pools opening or not is based on this document I believe. If already installed pools are emptied, they will collapse, non? So isn’t this a loophole?
Have just emailed AJC re: an article posted 1/30/08 stating a bill has been passed to allow pools to open…