Swimming season is almost upon us. But soon, public pools won’t get state inspections
A new Idaho law has removed a requirement that the state enforce “minimum standards” of health, safety and sanitation for public swimming pools.
In practice, that means that there will be no state inspections of public pools after July 1, when the law takes effect, said Russ Duke, the director of the Boise area’s Central District Health. Regional public health districts like his were the ones actually conducting the pool investigations under the rules created by the state Department of Health and Welfare, he said.
The department requested the change because it viewed the inspections as “obsolete,” said Sen. Julie VanOrden, R-Pingree, who co-sponsored the bill. Many pool operators, including cities, already perform their own pool inspections to comply with insurance requirements or local ordinances, VanOrden told the Idaho Statesman.
AJ McWhorter, a spokesperson for the health department, did not immediately respond to a question about why the department requested the change, which was reported Tuesday by Boise State Public Radio.
Duke pushed back on the idea that state-level inspections duplicated pool operators’ own inspections. When the health district does its annual inspections, “we do find issues,” suggesting that operators’ or municipalities’ own inspections are not always sufficient, he told the Statesman.
“We have had some pretty significant outbreaks in our health district” of water-borne illness, he said.
He likened the new law’s approach to allowing restaurants to conduct their own food-safety inspections.
Duke and leaders of the state’s other regional public health districts asked the state health department not to request the removal of the inspection requirements – or at least to give the districts time to come up with alternatives, including voluntary inspections and training programs for pool operators, that would allow for a uniform system statewide.
But the 21-page bill, which covers a range of public health-related functions and mentioned swimming pool inspections only once, passed the Legislature with only one vote against it, by Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise. She told the Statesman that she voted no after receiving emails from Boise expressing concern about the change.
Central District Health had been performing one annual inspection at each public pool in its jurisdiction, and follow-up inspections when it found problems or received complaints from the public. This year, the district will still be able to perform those inspections early in pools’ swimming seasons, Duke predicted, before the new law takes effect in July.
Boise tests and inspects its pools daily during the swim season, said Doug Holloway, the director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. He told the Statesman that nothing about its pools’ safety would change under the new law, because the city already adheres to the “strictest” health and safety standards and would continue to do so even without oversight and additional inspections from Central District Health.
The district inspects 36 pools in the Boise area, Duke said. Its environmental specialists who inspect pools also conduct restaurant and other inspections, so he does not anticipate any staff cuts, he told the Statesman by email.