New pool rules: A $29 million pain in the drain?

Swimming pools and spas across Orange County - and the nation - are being closed, drained and retrofitted in expensive attempts to comply with new federal safety rules, even though the required fixes may be a whole lot simpler and cheaper.

Confusion is being sown by the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act, which took effect last month and is named in honor of former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III’s 7-year-old granddaughter. The girl was trapped by the strong suction of a hot tub drain in 2002, and drowned as a result.

There are other horror stories: A 6-year-old Nebraska girl was playing in a kiddie pool in 2007 when she got stuck to the pool’s powerful drain and was disemboweled. The Consumer Product Safety Commission counts 74 cases of “drain entrapment” in pools and spas between 1999 and 2007, resulting in nine deaths.

THE BUBBLE
The new requirements are fairly straightforward: Pools and spas visited by the public - at hotels, athletic clubs, schools, home and apartment complexes, public and private aquatic centers (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of them across the country) - must ditch those flat drain covers and replace them with bubble-shaped drain covers. The bubble covers make it harder for hair, clothes and little bodies to get stuck to them. Those covers cost about $150 each, officials said.

THE MONEY
But some pools might have to install a second “anti-entrapment” system - and that gets complicated. Pool operators are saying the fixes will cost between $1,000 to $15,000 per pool - and that millions of gallons of water will be wasted as pools are drained for the fixes.

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