Recent information seems to show that the danger of that is very remote. The law should be amended to at least let all public or community pools open.

It happens everywhere. My company manages community pools all over Atlanta from some very poor neighborhoods to some very rich neighborhoods. And I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t matter where you live. Kids will get into trouble. We have just as many vandalism issues at neighborhoods with $600k+ homes as we do in inner city areas.

Secondly, the fact is that pools do not use much water. If you go to the pool two days in a row, the water you swam in today was the same water you swam in yesterday. We filter and chemically treat the water. We need very little to top it off each week to replace lost water from evap, splash out and filter cleaning.

The little bit of water that we’d save by keeping pools closed will cost us a lot:
1. Summer recreation and youth water sports programs for our kids to keep them healthy and out of trouble. Swim lessons for kids who need to learn the life-saving skill of how to swim. Water aerobics programs for elderly and people with limited mobility.
2. Health hazards that arise from unmaintained pools. Bacteria and algae run rampant in umaintained pools. They turn into breeding grounds for mosquitos that can spread diseases like West Nile.
3. The economic effects of collapse of multiple industries: swimming pool construction, maintenance, management, retail stores, chemical manufacturers, swim suit manufacturers and distributors, patio furniture manufacturing and sales, wholesale parts suppliers, the tourism and hotel industry. The list goes on and on of all the industries that depend on swimming pools to operate.
4. The economic effects of lower property values and quality of life. How do you sell a house with a pool you can’t use? How do you sell Fortune 500 companies on moving their headquarters here when your quality of life is so low, you can’t even go swimming in the summer?

The EPD has yet to produce a shred of evidence supporting their belief that keeping swimming pools closed will save a significant amount of water.

As I have calculated and reported on other posts, even if we had to completely drain and refill every commercial pool in Atlanta, we’d still use less water than many industrial users use in a month. And we’re not even asking for close to that. Most pools are kept at 85% or more of their normal level during the winter months. So all we really need to do to operate the pools is to top off the pools, and then add low maintenance amounts throughout the summer.

As crazy as this may sound, White Water is allowed to open under the current regulations.

See this article from the Gainsville Times where Kevin Chambers from the EPD is quoted as confirming that they are exempt.

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/archive/2606/

What makes no sense is how they can exempt a for profit water park but not exempt other for profit businesses dependent on water… how is that justifiable?

As I have told many of my customers, it’s as if we’re in the midst of a beef shortage, and the government told McDonald’s they can stay open, but Wendy’s and Burger King have to close down. It’s absurd.

But Chambers did say the exemption may change. So that may be why White Water isn’t able to give you a firm answer. They are no doubt hoping to keep their exemption. It will be interesting to see if they do.

I, for one, hope all pools are made exempt, or at least allowed to operate in a restricted manner than conserves water even more than we already do.

The main question I want to know is whether they’re currently allowed to open. It is:

A — Not allowed to open under the current restrictions, so they’re looking for changes to be made.
B — Allowed to open under the current restrictions, so they’re working to keep any new restrictions from affecting them.

I’m just curious…