Craig Gilbert |[email protected]
Jasper council this week learned their municipal pool seems to have been built to withstand a nuclear strike.
Detailed drawings the likes of which engineers prefer to deal with are scant when it comes to the foundation, which was laid in the 1950s, but culture and recreation director Yvonne McNabb said Tuesday it’s clear now the concrete that forms the pool is so strong it could in places support an apartment building.
Contractors working around the water slide this summer had to bring in heavier equipment. No, it wasn’t a bigger boat.
Like any water slide worth its salt, the tale of the replacement of the Crown jewel of the aquatic centre has taken a windy route to this latest approval. But instead of thrills, it splashed out with “overwhelming frustration” for Mayor Richard Ireland and other members of council.
The waterslide empties into a “plunge pool” that gives sliders a soft place to land. But intakes sometimes suck smaller children back in, requiring lifeguards to intervene. Councillors were told at a site visit earlier this year that a dry “runout” configuration was the only setup that would satisfy safety regulations written since the waterslide was added to the pool decades ago.
But when McNabb presented a cost estimate for the design of the pool by engineers WSP Oct. 16, the runout had become a more costly second option to leaving the plunge pool as-is. Plan A would cost $77,904 to design, including monitoring and post-construction inspection of the work by engineers. “Unknowns” related to the sturdy structure described above and exacerbated by a lack of any reliable blueprints mean changing things around would cost at least another $13,242.
Ireland was frustrated that council had made a decision based on information provided to them, that being replacing the waterslide with a runout configuration. The pool layout had to change, so that’s why the engineers had to be hired in the first place. Now, months later, they’re being told “none of that is so.”
Why is a new design needed, he asked, if the status quo is the way to go?
McNabb explained that she had reviewed the regulations since and found language that would deem the plunge pool acceptable in terms of liability.
“I didn’t see having a runout as necessary in any documentation,” she said. “As far as the risk goes, from the insurance company, there are risks on both sides with a dry runout or a plunge pool. You could slip on a hard surface or you could drown in a pool.”
Council voted 6-0 to replace the waterslide with a design similar to the existing setup. Coun. Bert Journault said he shared the mayor’s frustration but was in favour of keeping the waterslide design as it is, saying it has been a “centrepiece” of the pool for 30 years.
Coun. Scott Wilson, a contractor by day, said he’s no stranger to delays on a build, but his patience on the pool project has drained.
“It’s not fun to be out in public and have to come up with reasons why we’re not there yet, and we won’t be there for awhile,” he said. “If we’re asking for money to get a project done, let’s do our best to get that project done that year.”
