Swimmers Stew as Repair of City Pools Drags on

More than a year after a fluky and dangerous design flaw forced the closure of two public swimming pools in Los Angeles, the facilities remain closed--to the dismay of hundreds of swimmers, divers and aqua-aerobicists.

Recreation and Parks Department officials say it will take three to four more months to reopen popular pools at Cleveland High School in Reseda and the Westwood Recreation Center.

The pools closed in December 1997 after separate incidents in which swimmers suffered shocks from electrical currents surging through the water.

The shutdowns have dragged on while city officials investigated the cause of the malfunctions and then finally agreed that both pools would have to be completely rebuilt to correct faulty electrical grounding.

With construction finally underway, city officials said they hope to find out who was to blame for the defects that so jolted swimmers. The $1-million cost of the reconstruction could be at stake.

In the meantime, the nearly 120,000 annual patrons of the two pools are frustrated.

The loss has been particularly acute in Westwood, where the 25-yard indoor pool is one of the busiest in the city, hosting programs for every age group from toddlers to senior citizens.

“This is a pretty huge loss, in terms of the usage for aquatics on the Westside,” said Clay Evans, founder and coach of the Southern California Aquatic Masters Swim Club, which once had nearly 300 members a week swimming at the pool. “So many people rely on that pool for fitness and recreation. It’s tough.”

David Maricich, 27, who used to be a regular lap swimmer at the Westwood pool, said he was “surprised and frustrated” that after a year, it remains closed. “Why does it take so long to fix this problem?”

Officials in the city parks department, which operates both pools, said they also are disappointed that the pools have been closed. But they said the unusual nature of the electrical problem stumped them for months.

It was during last winter’s heavy storms that separate electrical surges in Reseda and Westwood challenged the integrity of the pools’ electrical systems. According to varying accounts, either a downed power line or a lightning strike caused electricity to surge toward the pools.

Swimmers in both pools reported feeling an electrical jolt, although no one was injured either in Westwood or at the Cleveland pool, which serves both the high school and the public.

Engineers said it was only luck that prevented someone from being seriously hurt.

Both pools were closed late in 1997, as the parks department hired a series of consultants to find the problem.

The consultants eventually agreed that the malfunction occurred in a grid of steel reinforcement bars, or rebar, that was supposed to act as a ground during electrical surges.

The rebar had been coated with vinyl in an attempt to prevent corrosion and stains on the walls of the pools. Unfortunately, the vinyl covering also prevented the steel from being properly bonded together to create the type of continuous circuit needed for a proper ground.

By the time experts agreed on the problem, it was May 1998. A discussion then ensued about whether to ask the original contractors to repair the work or to seek new bids.

Requests for new bids to rebuild the pools went out in May, and a contractor was not hired until August, with construction beginning in the fall at Westwood and in December for the Cleveland pool.

The start of work in Reseda took longer, in part, because plans had to be submitted to the office of the state architect, which oversees all construction on school grounds.

“We were hoping it would be ready for tryouts in February, and then we were hoping it would be open by the end of the season, but now we’ll just wait until next year,” said Barbara Suto, co-coach of the Cleveland High swim team, which will practice, instead, at the West Valley Jewish Community Center.

City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents the district around the Reseda pool, said the problems are a “horrific, glaring example of how things need to be done differently by the city government.”

A proposal Chick made last year would allow more flexible rules in city contracting, including eliminating the requirement that projects always go to the lowest bidder. The proposal also calls for tracking the performance of past contractors.

While those ideas wind their way through the City Council, other officials say they are determined to hold someone responsible for the design flaw and $1-million reconstruction price tag.

“My point is: Doesn’t somebody who made this critical mistake have liability, and don’t they have insurance?” said Steve Soboroff, president of the city Recreation and Parks Commission. “Why should the taxpayers of the city be responsible for it?”

It may be complicated, however, to determine who is at fault.

Each pool’s design was drawn by a separate architectural firm and each was built by a separate contractor. And all apparently were acting, at least to a degree, on specifications from the parks department.

“We had a couple discussions about whether we could assign liability for the problems, but we were concentrating on getting the pools back in use rather than getting hung up on the legal issues,” said Ron Fitzpatrick, director of planning and development for the parks department.

Fitzpatrick conceded that, in the final analysis, the city may have only itself to blame.

Speaking of the Cleveland pool, he said: “We issued a set of drawings. The contractor did what he was told to do. He built it according to the drawings and specs.”