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City In Compliance With Federal Swimming Pool Law
Galesburg's municipal swimming pools won't be among the hundreds statewide that could shut down as of Saturday because they're not in compliance with a years-old federal law.

City Recreation Superintendent Roger Sensabaugh says Lakeside Splashzone, the slide pool at Lake Storey Beach, and the Hawthorne Center Pool all have required upgrades to their drainage systems that essentially mitigate the suction done by pool drains.

The law was enacted after the 2006 death of a girl who was sucked into a pool drain, and Sensabaugh tells WGIL the pools are compliant, but didn't have the problems associated with other pools.

"Our pools, especially Hawthorne pool, it's a gravity fed where our drains are at in the deep well, it's basically gravity fed, there's no suction there. But that didn't matter at the time. There's been a lot of controversy of the way it was signed into law and basically pushed up on states and municipalities to have to have to change on these drains."

Sensabaugh says for many, the issue was having to comply with an unfunded mandate. He also says some like Galesburg were told initially they were exempt from the law, and then were told later they had to comply anyway.

But he says either way, the drains have been in place for mostly a couple years.
09 29 11 by Newsroom
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