Pleasant Grove Pool To Open Thursday After Last Week’s Chlorine Incident
Jun 11, 2019, 10:39 PM | Updated: Jun 12, 2019, 12:16 am
PLEASANT GROVE, Utah – One week after a chlorine accident sent dozens to the hospital and put a hold on summer swimming, the Pleasant Grove Veterans Memorial Pool remains closed and the city is installing new equipment.
“I just love it,” 13 year old Cami Christiansen said of the pool.
And what’s not to love, the diving board, basketball, rock climbing and, of course, the slide.
But for the past week, swimmers like Cami have been turned away from the pool.
“We wanted to just go swim the last hour it was open because that’s when it’s not really busy,” Cami said on Tuesday.
On June 4th, lifeguards abruptly cleared swimmers from the water because of a dangerous chlorine emergency. As many as 50 people got sick from exposure and medics transported at least 26 of them to the hospital, some with bloody noses and others who were coughing and vomiting.
In a statement posted to the entrance today, the Pleasant Grove pool wrote that at around 4:00 p.m. a manager discovered the pump had tripped for an unknown reason.
According to the city, while the water pump was off, a control panel that distributes chlorine kept operating, causing the chlorine to back up.
When a maintenance worker later restarted the pump, the water pushed the excess chlorine into the pool area.
“Once the chlorine entered the swim area it took a gaseous form and affected numerous people in a section of the pool. Emergency services were called and seven different local EMS agencies responded,” the statement read.
“It’s made me really nervous to come to the pool because I’m nervous it’s going to happen again,” Cami said.
The city is currently installing a new chlorine control box with safeguards to prevent a similar scene in the future. The city says “With the new control panel, if the pump were to lose power it would stop the chlorine from continuing to be pumped into the pipe. This would prevent large amounts of chlorine backing up and being introduced into the system once the water pump starts up again.”
“I really want it to open again because it’s really fun,” Cami said.
The pool is expected to open its doors to the public on Thursday June 13th.
The city says it has worked closely with the Utah County Health Department “to ensure that pool equipment continues to be in compliance with the State and County regulations. They will inspect the pool once the new equipment has been installed to give us clearance to re-open the pool.”
