EDITORIAL: Are the swimming holes drying up?

Mar. 25—It seems like forever that kids have equated the freedom and fun of summer with cannonballing off the side of a cement wall into the clear blue depths of chlorinated water.

Pennsylvania was one of the first states with municipal swimming pools. There were nine in Philadelphia alone more than 100 years ago. While the state is crisscrossed with rivers and streams and polka-dotted with lakes, there is something about a pool that speaks of a different experience — more social, like a block party with water.

Is that an experience we are losing?

The Bouquet Park Pool in Springdale Township has been teetering on the edge of sinking for years.

The nonprofit Allegheny Valley Swimming Pool Association has operated the pool for 55 years. A combination of looming financial pressure and falling involvement was threatening the pool in 2019, when the board put out a desperate December call for people to get involved.

Three months later, the world shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the little recreation facility that depended on membership and participation to support kids splashing and squealing on a summer day just couldn't stay afloat.

"I promise you that the current board did everything could be done to save it before covid-19 hit," the board posted on Facebook, announcing that the pool would not reopen and was being listed for sale.

It is the kind of thing that has happened in plenty of neighborhoods. Anyone with a pool in the backyard can tell you that they aren't exactly cheap to maintain, between the chlorine and the other chemicals, testing supplies, pumps and liners and other things you forget until they are critical.

But in 2007, the Virginia Graeme Baker Act was passed — federal legislation that required safety mechanisms that would prevent pool suction deaths like that of its namesake, the 7-year-old granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker III.

Since 2008, a number of community pools have closed or struggled to survive with the additional expenses of required safety equipment or remodels. Others have just been swamped by rising prices and falling attendance as more people turn to their own backyards for water fun or go for bigger thrills at water parks with slides and rides.

At least 65 Pennsylvania pools — including Ligonier Beach, Oakford Park Pool in Jeannette, Blue Spruce in Murrysville, Kennywood's Sunlite Pool, the Beau Clair Swim Club in Penn Township, New Kensington's Crystal Springs and the Melwood Park Pool in Allegheny Township — have closed since 2009.

These are economic decisions, and no one can blame the drowning municipalities or nonprofits that don't have the money or personnel to fight the current. You can't blame the for-profit businesses that recognize bad investments, either.

But that doesn't mean we can't mourn the losses.

Fewer pools means fewer kids get to experience the daily joy of a summer-long pool pass. If they have to wait for a trip to Sandcastle, they won't just hop on a bike and pedal like the wind for a few blocks to meet their friends and spend hours perfecting their underwater somersaults.

It also leaves out the kids who can't afford to go to a water park but could get a pool pass from Grandma for the summer or just scrape up a couple of dollars here or there for a precious day of swimming.

While some of these pools still exist, we need to support them with both time and money, because when they dry up, we just might realize how precious those cement ponds really were.

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