POOL NOTICE

We recognize that our prior communication regarding the upcoming closure of the pools lacked clarity as to why the Beede pool closure is happening. To that end, we want to provide you with more details on the issue at hand:

Over the last few weeks, we have seen small amounts of algae forming on the tiles in the dive well and lap pool. While safe for swimmers to use the pools at current levels, we need to address the issue to assure that we do not have a larger issue on our hands that would be even more impactful to our swimmers. Algae can form in pools for a variety of reasons including contaminated swim suits, inconsistent use of showers before swimming, chemical disruptions, etc. and can be challenging to combat if not addressed immediately and appropriately. While we cannot pin point the exact reason why this is happening, we do know that it needs to be addressed to assure no further growth. Please be assured that the work that was done in August during our regular planned shutdown was thorough and the issue at hand could not be predicted then. There is truly no good time to displace our members and athletes but after reviewing the schedule, we determined that the best week to do the work with the ‘least’ impact is the week of December 20th.  Most of our programs are over, meets are done until January and practices will already be reduced due to the holiday. Additionally, the Beede Center annually reduces hours of operation this time of year with adjusted hours of 7A-11A on 12/24 and an all day closure on 12/25. With that said, we recognize that we are still displacing a handful of programs and dozens of members with swim routines and we truly apologize for the inconvenience.

Our plan for the week of the 20th will be to shock the pools bringing the chlorine levels up to unsafe parts per million for our swimmers. During a pool shock, we turn off the filters so the chemicals can really ‘marinate’. While the pools are shock, our entire pool staff will be working to scrub the tiles, grout lines and pool deck to assure that we get all the algae molecules off. As you can imagine, this is a tedious task as we want to get all of the algae and simultaneously, we do not want to allow any water from the pool deck that may be contaminated into the pool as it gets scrubbed. Once we manually scrub the pool floors, deck, and grout lines, each pool has to get backwashed to remove the contaminated water and to clean the filters so the algae does not return. This takes nearly an entire day for the lap pool requiring 300,000 gallons of water to get filtered and at least a ½ day for the dive well that holds 125,000 gallons of water. The therapy pool is smaller with only 15,500 and the kiddie pool is 7,000. Once the backwashing is complete, we still need to watch the chemical levels and wait until they are back within safe parts per million to reopen. This can take a day or two in and of itself.

If everything goes as planned, we will reopen on Monday the 27th. If at all possible, we will open on the 26th and we will notify members if that is the case. Again, we apologize for the disruption this unexpected shut down will have on you and your families this holiday. The Beede Center will keep members informed on the progress of the maintenance and if our reopen date has any ability to be adjusted. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Andy Dutton, Beede Center General Manager, at 978-287-1009 or Adutton@concordma.gov.