Ward 97 councillor, Andre Beetge confirmed that his office received several enquiries regarding the quality and circulation of water in municipal swimming pools along the coast.
The Winklespruit swimming pool is a salt water pool that constantly drains with three pumps, ensuring that the water level remains at expectation.
The water is completely natural sea water with no added chemicals. The pool is drained weekly and the inner surface scrubbed and washed down with a chlorine mixture to both clean and remove algae build-up.
The three pumps are able to fill the pool within six hours.
The tidal pool at Baggies is completely natural and water flow is entirely dependent on tide – it is not drained, no chemicals are added and there are no pumps to regulate the level.
The Inyoni Rocks pool is also a salt water pool, but as it is still fitted with the older technology single pump system, refilling takes considerably longer than Winklespruit. While the pump maintains the desired water level, granular chlorine is added to maintain water quality.
The Pipeline swimming pool is a 500 000 litre fresh water pool fitted with a bag filter system. Similar to any domestic pool, the water is not drained, but submitted to regular backwash and the water quality maintained with both chlorine, acid and other chemicals.
While all pool pumps and systems are fully functional, the systems are unable to cope when challenged with continued overuse. This was clearly evident during the recent festive season, with excellent weather attracting record crowds over back-to-back long weekends.
“It is impossible for either the chemicals or the filtration systems to achieve what they are designed to do under these extreme conditions, but imagine the disappointment if pools were drained and people had to wait three days for it to refill again?
While water quality is now back to expectation, pools are scheduled for draining closer to the end of January to effect clean-ups and repairs,” said Cllr Beetge.
“The seawater pools are of less concern being that water is freely available – it is the fresh water pool that remains a constant headache.
Consideration will certainly be extended towards the fact that we find ourselves amid the most severe drought that the country has experienced in recent history. If conditions don’t improve, decisions would have to be made with recreation possibly being outweighed by stark reality.”
