Since the beginning of the swim season, Agassiz-Harrison residents were left wondering why the diving board at Agassiz’s outdoor pool was taken down.
District of Kent staff filed a report to council providing more information on the removal of the diving board at Ferny Coombe Pool.
During the previous council meeting on April 24, district staff reported to council that upon a pre-opening inspection of the pool, there were two major flaws with the diving board: a crack in the diving board bracket and damage to the structure of the board itself. Staff deemed the board to be unusable due to safety concerns.
Council was presented with three options: retaining a structural engineer and repairing the diving board, replacing the diving board and bracket and installing a concrete pad and finally, opting out of replacing the diving board at all.
In light of the upcoming Lets’emot Regional Aquatic Centre (LRAC), staff recommended that the district forego replacing the diving board.
In terms of keeping the board in place, the most cost-effective way to keep the board operating would have been repairing the bracket and replacing the diving board, which would’ve run the district about $4,000. However, the district would also have needed to hire a structural engineer for the project, which would’ve added about $3,000 to the project; the metal brackets needed to be certified as safe. This excludes welding costs as well.
The other x-factor in play with a replace and repair option would be the timeline; it’s unclear how long the project would have taken, and consequently how long the broken brackets would remain in place. This could’ve caused some safety challenges and possibly cancelled the 2023 swimming season altogether.
The second possibility was replacing both the diving board and the metal bracket. This would have been the quicker of the two repair and replace options, but there were also a number of unknown factors. The estimated costs of the repairs alone would have been abot $6,000. This does not include installation costs.
The brand new diving board would have required a concrete pool deck. However, the larger size of the potential concrete pad and the potential for further cracking of an already old pool deck caused the district staff to not recommend the option.
Staff looked into moving the new diving board to the LRAC, but potential damages to the bracket as a result of moving and potential wear and tear in an outdoor environment for an indefinite period of time ruled this out as a possibility.
Staff noted the decision did not come lightly. However, each year as the pool opens beyond its expected lifespan reaching up to 2015, staff find new problems to grapple with, some of which may have put each year’s swimming season in jeopardy. The priorities, at this point, are to keep the pool operational until the LRAC is ready, according to the report.
While the diving board is a marquee part of any pool, it is not something staff would consider a health and safety item,” the report concludes. “This, along with high costs and unknown risk factors to the remaining pool deck, was the rationale staff made behind the decision to remove the diving board from the Ferny Coombe Pool.”