Many of those most in need of swim lessons this summer can’t get them because a nationwide chlorine shortage has made it difficult for public pools to stay open.
Kids can swim again, but are they ready for that?
The chlorine shortage has already shuttered public pools and cancelled swim lessons across the country, including many in sunny Los Angeles. Less than a month after they were cleared to reopen by the Department of Public Health, the majority of city-run pools in L.A. have had to close down for want of the chemical.“The nationwide chlorine shortage has certainly affected the pools here,” Department of Recreation and Parks spokeswoman Rose Watson wrote in an email.
“They have to be tested a certain number of times per day, and if you’re having trouble sourcing chlorine for your pool, once you get below that minimum level, you need to close down,” said Jerry Wallace, head of SwimChem in Sacramento and former chairman of the California Pool and Spa Association. “Residential pools aren’t regulated in that way.”
Weston and other experts say such lessons are urgently needed this year, as children who would have started last year mostly missed out, and those who took lessons in 2019 have either forgotten or outgrown the skills they’d gained two summers ago.“Harmony is our little fish, she loves to be in the water, but her desire is greater than her skill,” said dad Sam Taylor, whose three youngest children— Harmony, 10, Melody, 8, and Sam III, aka Lucky, 2 — swim with Martin twice a week.
Mack Richardson, 9, left, and his cousin Damar Caine, 7, jump into the newly reopened Algin Sutton Pool in South Los Angeles on July 2. Public pools in L.A. have had to close down over a lack of chlorine. The result, he said, is that drowning deaths increasingly cut along class lines, despite the unique history of segregation that leaves Black children at far greater risk of drowning than children of other races.
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