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New law forces some pools to pull plug
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KAI RYSSDAL: If the weather cooperates it's going to be a big weekend for a good number of the 300,000 public swimming pools in this country -- Memorial Day being the the unofficial start of summer. A lot of those pools, though, will stay empty for at least part of the season. In some places, like Philadelphia, there's just no money to open up this early. In others, a new law has pool guys around the country working overtime. Lisa Napoli explains.
LISA NAPOLI: Sean Debley has been staring at a lot of pools filled with workmen instead of water. Debley's a health inspector for Ventura County in Southern California. The reason so many pools are under repair has to do with a new federal safety law. Its goal is to keep young swimmers from being trapped by underwater drains.
Sean Debley: You have the potential for body entrapment, fingers and toes getting into openings. So you want to really make sure the fittings are installed to minimize the potential for entrapment.
The law is called the Virginia Graeme Baker Act. It's named after former Secretary of State James Baker's late granddaughter. She's one of nine people who've died over the last decade from the forceful suction of pool or hot tub drains. The law went into effect last December. And now every public pool in the nation has to comply. Health inspector Sean Debley says there's no easy fix.
DEBLEY:Each pool is uniquely different in how the plumbing's configured, how the recirculation system is set up. That's been one of the challenges in trying to come into compliance is that there's not a universal cure.
In some cases, it just means new drain covers. For more complicated fixes, automatic shut-off pumps or new drains have to be installed. That can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single pool. Tom Lachocki is the chief executive of the National Swimming Pool Foundation. He estimates the cost of retrofitting all the public pools in the country could reach $1.5 billion dollars.
TOM LACHOCKI: For manufacturers, distributors, services companies, that's quite a stimulus package. However, for the local pool, they're the ones who are bearing the cost, and as a result more pools are closing.
Among them: ten pools in Georgia's parks. The state says it can't afford the $150,000 dollars to make the necessary upgrades and so they'll keep them shut for the summer. Lachoki says there's no way to know for sure just how many pools across the country have shut down or closed for repairs because there's no central clearinghouse keeping track. Many pool operators weren't even aware of the law until they got notices about it from their insurance companies.
Scott Wolfson is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which oversees the Baker Act. He says there have been delays in implementation.
Scott Wolfson: We know there are pool operators out there who are still waiting for covers to be delivered to them, for labor to be available to install them, that there are some state officials that have a backlog of permits to clear.
Wolfson says so far, no one has been fined for non-compliance. But it's believed half of the pools in the country haven't made the retrofits. In Ventura County, health inspector Sean Debley's signed off on the upgrades made on this pool -- and so it will be open, just in time for summer.
I'm Lisa Napoli for Marketplace.
I’m the president of our neighborhood swimming pool and we reluctantly decided not to open our baby pool this year due to these newest regulations; now small children and non-swimmers will only have the big pool to play in. Almost every year there seems to be new environmental regulations and laws requiring costly renovations and/or new equipment. Hopefully the government will not start requiring automobile owners to keep their older cars compliant with the new automobile regulations.
I've worked within the pool industry for 15 years and have been a proponent of bather safety since day one. I have researched this aberration of an act for nearly two years. The tragedy of losing a child I cannot comprehend, but, Congress only added this legislation because of to whom Graeme Baker was related. If it were my child the act would still await action on my congresspersons desk. The idea of regulating swimming pools ans spas at a federal level is asinine. Worse yet is that the CPSC has botched the management of the act. First, it took them 6 months to interpret the act which lead to the nightmarish delays in drain fitting production. That interpretation omitted key information and was to vague. This resulted in enormous confusion within the industry. Additionally, no mandate of enforcement at the local level has resulted in apathy by many health agencies, no consistent enforcement or inspection procedures. Nearly 9 months after the interpretation was issued the CPSC put up a FAQ section on their website in an attempt to clarify those omissions. Too little too late as many pools and spas had already been retrofit. Do you really expect me to go back to a client and tell them the interpretation changed again? The latest is that the CPSC has yet to issue an interpretation on suction entrapment in portable spas. The CPSC is simply the wrong agency to manage this act. Their lack of understanding of the issues has cost more money and frustration for the industry and end users that can be quantified. The worst part about this story is that comprehensive standards already exist to prevent suction entrapment and have since 2006. If the CPSC had used the ANSI/APSP-7 standards as a template it would have saved the industry and the end users no end of frustration and cost.
NINE children? This is one of those boondoggles from ridiculous parents who take themselves seriously when they say, "I don't care how much it costs, because if it saves JUST ONE LIFE, it's worth it!" We lose more people each day to highway accidents, poor immunization, and lack of health insurance; problem is, those haven't had some bigshot be personally affected.
1.5 billion could be spent so much better. Like improving education. Maybe start with, "Hey, kids, don't play with the pool drain, you could DIE."
This is in regard to the story about swimming pool safety. 1.5 billion in pool retrofits for 9 deaths in 10 years is an incredible statistic -- 167 million per fatallity. What if 1 of the 9 had not been James Baker's granddaughter? The law would never have even been considered. Of course the bullding code for new pool construction should include any and all relevant safety features but retrofitting all public pools for such an insignificant issue is ridiculous.
1.5 billion could save hundreds or thousands of lives if spent in other ways. What a waste -- unless you're the pool man.
