With social distancing tweaks, Philly pools should reopen this summer | Opinion

In 1884, Philadelphia opened one of the first municipal pools in the country on South 12th Street. These original pools were designed by city officials to serve as a place for working-class and poor Philadelphians to bathe. However, the users lined up not to bathe — but to have fun and cool down after long hot days of work.

Today, Philadelphians still line up to enjoy their municipal pools that are vibrant public spaces scattered throughout our neighborhoods. Each pool serves 200 people a day on average, and in a city that gets hotter each year, and where many do not have access to air-conditioning, they are a lifesaving summer fixture.

One hundred and thirty-six years after that first pool opened in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced prematurely that he planned to close public pools for the summer, slashing them from the 2021 city budget. He, however, named not the city’s financial issues but the coronavirus pandemic and concern for public health as the culprit. The most recent guidance from the CDC has stated, “There is no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 can be spread to people through the water in pools, hot tubs, spas, or water play areas. Proper operation and maintenance (including disinfection with chlorine and bromine) of these facilities should inactivate the virus in the water.”

Brian Abernathy, the city’s managing director, reiterated this move was not to balance the budget but because they are unsure how to comply with social distancing and other public health protocols at the pools. While some may applaud this as a needed measure, it just shows a lack of leadership on how to make public spaces work during the pandemic.

City pools seem one of the safer public spaces to open as we face a summer of our new normal with a few simple changes and increased cleaning. First, the city could delay the pool season (usually the pools open at the end of June and close early in August). Instead, the city could opt to move the pool season to mid-July to the end of August. The later season would give Philadelphians something to look forward to during this time, especially for families who cannot afford to leave the city in August, when we see the highest temperatures in the city.

Additionally, city pools are fenced in and often require you to wait outside in a line to maintain swimmer to lifeguard ratio. During this time, we would just need individual groups to wait six feet apart, something Philadelphians have learned to do at grocery stores and other essential businesses. During even our normal summers, every 30 minutes to an hour at the busiest times, my local pool asks us to leave and let other swimmers have an opportunity to swim. If we opened pools for eight hours a day and allowed 25 people in the pool each hour, they could easily serve 200 visitors each day.

Finally, the city could implement lanes to allow only for lap swimming, with designated time for kids with kickboards to seniors who use swimming as a healthy form of exercise. This would help to eliminate getting too close to each other while allowing people to cool down and exercise.

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The coronavirus has forced us to make hard choices, as individuals and as a city. The decision to close pools may be a well-intentioned one, but Mayor Kenney should consider the impact and the options before forcing Philadelphians to lose yet another thing to this pandemic.

Dena Ferrara Driscoll is a South Philadelphia mother of two who works in nonprofit communications and development and advocates around public space issues. She learned how to swim just last year. @bikemamadelphia