Wellington City Council delays swimming pool opening indefinitely until source of water leaks is found
By Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — The Wellington City Council voted to delay opening the swimming pool three weeks before its scheduled opening to figure out what is causing the aquatic center to lose 25,000 gallons of water a day.
By a 3-3 vote, with Mayor Jim Valentine casting the tie-breaker, the council voted to close the pool until professionals could come in to determine exactly where the leak was and whether it was safe to open. Voting to close was: Kevin Dodds, Mike Westmoreland, and Guy Leitch—vote to open as scheduled: Robert Hamilton, Rick Roitman, and Joe Soria.
The vote caught the Wellington Rec Commission officials flat-footed. The pool was scheduled to open three weeks from today on May 27 on Memorial Day weekend. The lifeguard staff has already been hired.
WRC Director Cody White said he isn’t sure how to proceed with those in training.
“We have a full staff of 30 to 35 people ready to proceed with the summer — 22 of them are new lifeguards,” White said. “This discussion should have been done in March – not May 2. This puts a lot of people in a bind.”
White said he is annoyed by the fact that this was discussed without his knowledge. Nothing was on the agenda that such a motion would be made. He would have appreciated having some input, and it probably should have been discussed during a scheduled work session.
On the agenda dated May 2, 2023, it was listed as a city official report with Public Works Director Jeremy Jones with no mention of a vote.
Wellington city council member Kevin Dodds brought up his concerns at the meeting. He said with the drought that Wellington has been having and the current level of Wellington Lake; it wouldn’t be prudent to open the pool since it is losing so much water.
“We are losing 25,000 gallons a day. To me, that is completely unacceptable,” Dodds said. “We need to get professionals in and figure out what is going on before we proceed.”
Dodds said not opening the pool now is better than closing it later in the midseason. If it is determined that the pool needs fixing at the beginning, staff members can find other jobs; otherwise, if it is closed abruptly, like in mid-June, getting another summer job will be more difficult to obtain.
The problem is that no one knows exactly how much the pool will leak this summer. In the fall, American Leak Detection Company was hired to find the leak. It was determined that the leakage was around the diving well. But the specifics were unknown, Jones said.
So earlier this spring, city staffers went in to find the leaks. After several repair attempts, the pipes were tested to see if the lines could retain any pressure, but they could retain none.
Jones told the council he would need to fill the pool to determine if it was leaking more, the same, or less.
Typically, a 386,000-gallon pool such as Wellington’s will lose around 5,000 gallons a day due to evaporation and the water movement from the various pool features.
He said part of the issue is when the pool was built 20 years ago, brass piping was used instated of PVC-plastic piping, making leak detection much more difficult.
“It is hard for me to understand why this was done at the time,” Jones said. “Brass piping was going out of style in the early 1980s. I’m not sure why the decision was made to go with brass in the mid-90s.”
Replacing those pipes could become an expensive proposition, up to $1 million, not to mention the possible destruction of part of the pool to get to those pipes.
Wellington assistant city manager Jason Newberry said not all the water being replenished comes from the lake. A lot of it comes from wells.
Dodds suggested that funds from the American Recovery Plan Act designed for the city of Wellington be used. Wellington City Manager Jeff Porter said finances could be rearranged to get the pool open.
But time is an issue for White and those working at the pool. He said he would meet with city staff and devise a contingency plan later today.
In the meantime, the official word is: the Wellington pool is closed until further notice.
