Lexington, KY - On November 16, a closed-door meeting in Frankfort, Ky., took place that will affect every business and nonprofit organization that operates a public swimming pool.
The Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) hosted a stakeholders meeting of mostly people from the regional health departments, including Louisville and Lexington, with a few people representing the pool industry. Moderating the discussion was Kathy Fowler, the CHFS interim director of public health and safety. The purpose of this meeting was to gather input on a long overdue update to Kentucky's swimming pool codes.
I was fortunate enough to be invited because, for more than two years, I have been actively trying to get splash pads incorporated into Kentucky's swimming pool regulations. A splash pad (also called interactive fountain, sprayground or urban-beach) is an area where water sprays from sculptural nozzles or tumbles from elevated buckets to soak the children who play in its streams. It's designed to be played in. There's no standing water within a splash pad and practically no risk of drowning. They are neither fountains nor swimming pools.
Most of Lexington's landscape fountains have signs warning that the water isn't safe to swim in or ingest, but signs alone aren't always enough to stop kids and parents from jumping in on a hot summer day. Some fountains may look like they're as safe as your backyard sprinkler, however this is sadly not the typical case. Because splash pads are clearly designed to be played in, and many use recirculated water, it's in everyone's best interest to have these built to standards acceptable to the health department.
The lack of standing water in splash pads is the major difference between splash pads and conventional public pools. Kentucky's swimming pool codes, unchanged since 1987, weren't written to incorporate splash pads, and this is causing a lot of headaches among designers and inspectors, as some projects are being submitted to the state for review and approval, and some are not. The main reason for the discrepancy is that the Cabinet for Health and Family Services was given statutory authority by the Kentucky Legislature to regulate public swimming pools, yet it has not been given similar authority to regulate splash pads. Many people, including myself, think that the CHFS should have the authority to regulate these, and it will take a legislative process to accomplish this.
As I have found out for myself, writing draft codes is not an easy thing to do. Considering what needs to be done at the state level, this process will not only be difficult, but it will also be expensive. I have great empathy for the folks at CHFS who have got to accomplish this with limited resources.
Kentucky isn't the only state going through a pool code update process. Perhaps there is something we can gain from adopting some iteration of one of the national pool codes. If Kentucky were to adopt some of the national pool codes, there could certainly be minor edits to satisfy our CHFS and most of that code re-writing work would already be done. National codes have been written for the purpose of adoption by states like ours that struggle now to incorporate new construction methods along with the repercussions of Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act. Unfortunately, not all of these national codes will include splash pads in the near future. As of now, the International Code Council, in cooperation with the Association of Pool and Spa Professionals, has published the 2012 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code (ISPSC). The ISPSC, however won't include splash pads until its next update in 2015. The Center for Disease Control, in association with the National Swimming Pool Foundation, is publishing topic-related modules that will be the Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC). Several modules of the MAHC have been published already, and its module covering splash pads should be available for public comment in the next several months.
As part of a national construction trend, many municipalities are building or planning to build splash pads, as studies show traditional rectangular pools are seeing fewer attendees per year. Many of these interactive water features have already been built in Kentucky; the most recent in Lexington was at the Fifth Third Pavilion built in 2010.
Unlike the fountains at Lexington's Courthouse Plaza, not every water feature has been designed to the standards of "better than pool water" quality. I have seen with my own eyes some interactive water features in Kentucky that were built without sanitizers or adequate filtration capacity. Unfortunately, contaminated water can look just like any other water when it's sprayed up through the air. I believe it's only a matter of time before some waterborne illness is attributed to this lack of regulation. For this reason, it's in the CHFS' best interest to get design standards for splash pads adopted as soon as possible. It's a good sign, then, that this was the very first item discussed during the CHFS pool code stakeholder meeting.
In that meeting, it was apparent that many groups want issues revised, clarified and included in the next version of Kentucky Swimming Pool Code. Many attendees asked for regulations addressing the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act. Issues that were also discussed included inspections, life-guarding and pool operator training. There was discussion of a standing committee to periodically review and update the codes so we don't go another 25 years without an update. We discussed breaking the 100-page code into small modules and/or adopting the national Model Aquatic Health Code. All these ideas and more were written down, filling several easels of notepads.
The CFHS might have perceived that only a minor edit to the existing regulations would be required. The vast input given from the stakeholders prior to and during that meeting leaves no doubt that a minor edit would not suffice. Getting the stakeholders' consensus on a whole code update in the next year looks impossible - after which, it would still have to go through a public comment process and then through a legislative process. It looks like Kentucky may wait two more years until interactive water features like splash pads will have state-mandated design guidelines. For everyone's health, I hope this is soon enough.