By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
All the yuck and bugs get sifted out of Mahwah’s main municipal pool by a big filter. But to keep pool water pristine, Director Jay Esposito says you need chlorine — bleach, basically.
“Keeps the poop out of the pool,” he said. “It tries to. At least, it keeps it clean, that’s for sure.”
And here’s ground zero in the battle for poop-free public pool water: the kiddie pool. Shallow, warm and popular with the diaper crowd. When Esposito grabs the chemical test kit and heads over here to test chlorine levels, he says parents notice.
“Especially when you have a lot of kids in the kiddie pool, you go up there and test the water. The parents are like, ‘What’s the reading?’ Here’s the reading. ‘Oh, good!’ Because it makes them feel good,” he said.
State law requires public pools to test pH and chlorine levels every two hours and to test for fecal coliform bacteria every week.
Garden State Labs got 400 pool water samples to test last week. Eighteen turned yellow. That’s bad.
“If there is coliform bacteria, it turns yellow,” said Garden State Labs Director Harvey Klein.
So there is coliform bacteria. Poopy water?
“Well, we don’t like to use the word ‘poop’ but coliform is an unsanitary indicator. And this happens to be from a kiddie pool,” Klein said.
You can see fecal bacteria growing in a petri dish from the same sample. The lab director says about 5 percent of pool water samples in New Jersey come up dirty, triggering a second test.
“If you have two consecutive bacterial exceedances, the state regulations are quite clear: the pool should be shut down, disinfected and remain closed until you get a satisfactory result,” Klein said.
A recent CDC report surveyed public pool inspections in 16 communities in five states, not including New Jersey. It found one in eight inspections resulted in immediate closure due to serious health or safety violations, usually fecal coliform. The main offender?
“We found that one in five routine inspections of these kiddie wading pools resulted in immediate closure because of a serious health or safety violation,” said CDC Healthy Swimming Program Chief Michele Hlavsa.
What to do? Mahwah super-charges all of its pools with chlorine twice a week and it’s candid with parents about little kids.
“We ask them to wear rubber diapers. We ask them to wear a swim diaper on top of the rubber diaper. And it works out so much better that way,” Esposito said. “If you’re not potty trained, we don’t want you in the big pool. When the big pool closes, a lot of people get upset by that.”
Responsible pool managers often post their test results. Or you can bring your own test strips and test the water for chlorine or pH. Because no one should ever be left swimming in doubt.