Mind you, I used to work there like ten years ago now, and it was a maintenance nightmare even then. The place was trending towards unsafe, especially after a few years -- but part of the reason it was unsafe was, even minor upgrades to the system eliminate the 'grandfathered' status of the pool, and you then have to fix everything, which isn't feasible to do. Here's the letter:
Hooray, government!
After a difficult decision, we have decided the pool will not be opening this year. Due to the age and condition of our pool, we cannot meet county, state and federal regulations without spending a considerable amount of money. Some of the major problems include:
The pool itself has a major leak that requires us to run water into it 24/7. This affects the water pressure into the clubhouse, which stresses the chlorine system, our well, and all facilities in the clubhouse.
Many of our gutters are full of holes and rust; which affects the return of water back into the pool, from our filtration system. We have patched, welded, and replaced them, but those were temporary fixes, at a considerable cost. The pool is in need of major repairs in order to function properly this summer.
The biggest obstacle is our antiquated filtration system. If any part of the system were modified, we would have to meet all county, state and federal regulations. Due to the age of the system, it is difficult to obtain parts and (almost impossible) to find the old style DE filters. In our greatest efforts to keep our pool thriving, over the past few years we have been collecting filters and other necessary parts from older pools with useful parts that have shut down. Unfortunately, any spare parts and/or filters we were able to obtain were lost last year in the maintenance fire.
Currently we are grandfathered in with minor repairs, but as we alluded to earlier, major renovations are necessary. If we undertake any of these renovations we must come into compliance with the Virginia Graham Baker Act, which requires even more renovations. The VGBA, would in essence, require us to build an entirely new pool. It would require us to reconstruct the pool by adding another main drain, replace the current DE filtration system with a high rate sand system (to have the ability to filter 165,000 gallons of water every six hours), replace the pump and gutters, replace the filtration system, and renovate and restructure the pool to make it handicap accessible.
We solicited bids over the past few years to rebuild and update the pool and the complete filtration system to meet the Virginia Graham Baker Act. The cheapest bid was in excess of $200,000.00 from (place). Other bids were considerably higher. We are truly sorry to say from a business standpoint that it does not warrant the Pompey Club spending this amount of money on the pool. It is more beneficial to direct our energy and resources to our golf course. We want to continue with our program of rebuilding our tees, bunkers, more blacktopped cart paths, and improving drainage.
We certainly hope you understand our carefully thought-out decision. We sincerely apologize to all our loyal pool members, the swim team, and we hope you understand and have been pleased with the pool in the past.
Hooray, government!
