I know many of you have had a number of questions directed towards you over the last week concerning the drought, and may even have a few questions yourself after reading the AJC articles concerning swimming pools over the last couple of weeks.  Since the article about swimming pools possibly not opening due to the drought was published in the AJC there has been a lot of discussion and activity.  I would like to share the following thoughts and ideas with you. 

The decision as to whether or not swimming pools will be allowed to open has not been made, yet.  There is leeway for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) to grant permission for swimming pools to open, even if we stay at Level 4 drought conditions. 

One of the key questions should be “Is the opening of swimming pools a significant event in the overall drought picture?”  Compared to other water users, swimming pools use a small amount of water because the water is constantly filtered, treated and reused. 

·      A 2002 UGA study showed that golf courses use an average of 53 million gallons of water per year per course.

·      The Gatorade bottling plant south of Atlanta uses 70 million gallons per month.

·      In contrast, it is estimated that filling all of the pools in metro Atlanta would use 250 million gallons of water, or the amount normally used by five golf courses, or the amount used by the Gatorade plant over the course of the summer.  And, we do not need to fill the pools – there is already water in the pools. 

Now we are not picking on golf courses or Gatorade.  We feel sure that people will be playing golf and drinking Gatorade this summer.  We think they should be able to swim, too. 

Here are some reasons that swimming pools should open: 

• Swimming pools provide safe recreation and constructive activity for hundreds of thousands of children and families during our hot summers.  What activities are going to replace the hours of time spent at the pool?
• The benefits to health and fitness provided by swimming are well documented, and people ranging in age from children to senior citizens participate in swimming.
• Health Departments are already on record as favoring the opening of pools this summer, because they are concerned that unattended pools can become havens for bacteria, parasites and West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes.
• Swimming pools, just like neighborhood parks, create a sense of community and family bonding which provides a proven enhanced sense of overall wellbeing.
• Supervised pools provide a safe alternative to the unsafe swimming in lakes and rivers.  People will look for places to swim and if pools are closed that only leaves lakes and rivers, which have poor water quality because of the drought and are unsupervised.  This will lead to more drownings and the spread of water-borne disease.
• Tens of thousands of children learn to swim every summer in outdoor pools, thus giving them the ability to save their own lives.
• If the water in pools is not maintained it will waste the water that is currently
  in the pool. The water would have to be drained from the pool and the pool refilled in order to get the pool operational when that is allowed.
• Homes with pools will face an immediate and severe decline in value, impacting individual homeowner financial positions to an unspeakable degree.  
• Homes in neighborhoods with HOA community pools will decline in value, if pools cannot open.
• Tens of thousands of swimmers train and compete in summer league swimming every summer.  These young people benefit from the physical activity and the character building aspect of sport.  Future Olympians are in the group of young people.
• Several Atlanta area swimmers have excellent chances to make the 2008 Olympic Team.  The Olympic size pools that they need to train in are often outdoors, and robbing them of this training opportunity could mean that they do not make the US Olympic Team as a result of pools closing.
• A ban on outdoor pools is unnecessary, serves no public purpose and doesn’t significantly impact water usage.

What can you do? 

The public needs to let Carol Couch, the Director of the EPD, and Gov. Sonny Perdue know that pools need to be open so that Georgia children can have access to a healthy, safe, supervised summer activity!   If you feel that pools should be open this summer, please share this information with your members so that they can contact the appropriate officials to let them know their feelings.  The more people who send mail and emails, the better chance that pools will open.

I have included a lists of government contact in the links below. I have also include other significant link if you are interest in learning more about these issues

Please contact me if you have any other questions, or if I can serve you in any other way. 

Sincerely, 

Doug McNaughton