BUTTE - It’s officially summer and Butte’s 3-year-old outdoor is still not ready to open.
“We really wanted to open sooner, we were ready to go, but we realized we had a pretty signification leak,” said Parks and Recreation Director J.P. Gallagher.
Crews discovered a pipe beneath the deep end of the pool was not properly winterized and was damaged. It has since been fixed and the concrete covering the pipe needs time to set before water is returned to the pool. The cost of the damage was covered under the pool’s warranty.
“The winterization plan that was designed for the pool, we realize the failures of that now and it’s something we will address and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Gallagher.
The discovery of the leak delayed last month’s opening of the pool. It also took crews a long time to find the leak through the thousands of feet of piping.
“And trying to find where the leak was was pretty time consuming, so it took about a week before we could actually find what was happening with the pool,” said Gallagher.
When the pool finally does open they are going to take some safety precautions due to the coronavirus, and this means, they are going to limit admission to three shifts per day with no more than 50 people per shift.
“People are only going to be allowed to come at one of the session a day, they can’t come to multiple sessions, because we’re going to be limited to so few as it is, we want to make sure that we can accommodate the people that we can,” said Gallagher.
The pool is expected to open July 13th and will remain open through Labor Day.
