The pool at the Craig Recreation and Aquatic Center is a 25-yard, six lane competition pool. It’s the only one like it on Prince of Wales Island. Right now, the sides are lined with caution tape to keep people out.
It’s for safety reasons — the lamination at the bottom of the pool is busting open. Craig Aquatics Director Mandy Griffin says when the holes started emerging earlier this spring, it was unexpected. The morning lap swimmers were the first to notice.
“We had patrons in swimming, and we had one of our patrons go, ‘I think you guys have a hole in the bottom of your pool,’ and we’re like, ‘oh my goodness, yes, we do,'” she said.
Griffin said at the time, the first hole was around the size of a baseball. But by the end of the week, it was about two feet wide. More holes started popping up, erupting and gradually expanding. As of last week, there were a few more spots that she said are likely to burst soon.
“It kind of volcanoes off the bottom,” she said. “It’s neat to watch, but not great for us.”
With recommendation from the Department of Environmental Conservation, the city voluntarily made the decision to close the pool for safety reasons.
One risk is that if someone were to get their hair or toe caught in one of the holes, the weight of the water could entrap someone. Additionally, the quartz plaster coating that’s bursting from the bottom is similar to glass. Griffin says even though you can’t see them, there are particles everywhere, and it’s shedding more and more over time. If that quartz plaster gets into someone’s eyes or someone accidentally swallows it, Griffin says there’s no telling what the effects of that would be.
The city is still determining exactly how this happened. The city council voted earlier this spring to hire a company to conduct a structural engineering inspection of the site to better understand the scope of the problem. That was completed in early June, and found extensive cracking, leaking, and movement beneath the pool structure. The company said deep foundation stabilization efforts will likely be part of any repairs or reconstruction.
They also identified that one big concern with draining the pool is the millions of pounds of hydrostatic pressure that would cause. That means if the water is drained too fast, there’s a risk of the pool popping off the foundation.
“Could we have just come in and re-plastered this? Absolutely,” Griffin said. “Would it have held? Probably not. We would be looking at spending a substantial amount of money to re-plaster for it to happen again in two, three, four, five, years down the road, if that. So yeah, it’s all about long-term solutions right now.”
Last week, the council voted to approve a peer review of that analysis — or to hire someone to double check the company’s work before moving forward with any big decisions. Any actions must be approved by the city council.
There are multiple ways to go about repairs: one option is to install a stainless steel system to the existing pool structure. Griffin estimates that could “easily” be kept under $4 million. Another option is to demolish the pool and rebuild it from scratch — which she estimates would cost more than $20 million.
Some council members, like Michael Kampnich, have expressed that complete demolition and a $20 million price tag is unrealistic.
“If we get into having to fund a major renovation of the whole pool, that’s not going to happen out of our pocket,” Kampnich said at a recent city council meeting. “That’s only going to happen through a federal grant or a state grant, and we’re in some really lean times, both at state and federal levels. So I don’t see that happening.”
Griffin said she is currently looking into outside funding and grant opportunities.
Regardless of which method the council decides to move forward with, there are additional hurdles that come with being in a remote location. Getting materials and labor out to the island can take a lot of time.
City administrator Morris Ververs said the city is also exploring options to open portions of the pool away from the damaged areas and conducting some short-term repair that would safe for public use.
“We take seriously the importance of the pool to the community, but we also have a duty to the community that we move forward soberly, and city resources are used as efficiently as possible,” Ververs said in an email to KRBD.
In the meantime, the recreation staff is making do with what they have. The fitness center, hot tub, sauna and kiddie pool are still open. A smaller above-ground pool is set up as a stopgap. There are harnesses available to help people to swim in place, kind of like a water treadmill. They are hoping to get a larger above ground pool donated soon, too.
But even with these measures, Griffin says they’ve lost a lot of use at the pool.
“You know, we’ve got to get this facility back open,” she said. “Our community depends on it.”
The aquatic center has had to cancel swim lessons, movie nights and aqua fit programming. Griffin says she’s concerned how the community, and especially the youth, will fare when the rainy season starts. But she’s worked with facility reworks and rebuilds before, and says she’s optimistic the pool will get up and running.
