MAKING A SPLASH
On Wednesday, the city will officially open a new ‘natural’ outdoor pool in Borden Park that doesn’t use chemicals. Instead, the water is treated though sand and gravel filters and by the natural interactions of plants, algae and zooplankton.
The first thing you notice when you plunge into the new Borden Park Natural Pool isn’t the cold.
(OK. Actually it is the cold. Because the pool doesn’t use any chlorine or salt, the water is only heated to a maximum of 23 C. When it hits that temperature, they turn off the heating system and rely on the sun to maintain or raise the temperature. The morning when I jumped in, the water was still a brisk 22.7 C.)
But the second thing you notice?
It’s the water itself.
It doesn’t smell like bleach. It doesn’t taste like pickle brine. It feels soft. It feels, in a strange way, more “real” than the chemically-treated water of a typical public pool.
On Wednesday, the Borden Park Natural Pool is scheduled to open to the general public — a mere two years and two months behind schedule.
It’s the first pool of its kind in Canada and only the second one in North America. It’s modelled on natural swimming pools that are popular in Germany and Austria. Instead of chemical disinfectants, dechlorinated water is cleansed and purified though a series of sand and gravel filters and by the natural interactions of plants, algae and zooplankton.
Walk into the enclosure and you see two pools for the general public — a tot’s wading pool, which is 0.6 metres deep, and a sloped-entry swimming pool, which goes down two metres deep at its deepest point. Both are surrounded by sandy “beaches” where people can build sand castles, sunbathe in deck chairs, or play a little beach volleyball.
There are also three separate “working ” pools, the filtration ponds that are constantly cleaning the water of bacteria, viruses, phosphorus, and other micronutrients. Plants such as blue water iris, marsh marigolds, duckweed, water lilies, bladderwort and cattails oxygenate the water, filter the water, or provide habitat for the zooplankton which eat the bacteria.
It’s a delicate balancing act. No one who uses the pool is allowed to use sunscreens that contain phosphorus or shampoos that use phosphorus. (And yes, they will check your beach bag on the way in.) Everyone is required to take a warm-water “soaking shower” so that they enter the water with their hair and bodies as clean as possible. You can’t wear cotton bathing trunks or cotton T-shirts or anything made of cotton at all. No more than 400 people can be in the water at any one time. And if the water temperature rises to 29 C on a hot, sunny day? The pool has to close.
But if you follow the rules? You can be rewarded with a cool, refreshing lake-like swim. And if a little sand gets dumped in the pool along the way? Well, that helps to balance the system too.
“Our motto is, ‘Keep it clean, keep it open,’ ” said Cyndi Schlosser, the facility manager for the site.
She and her staff test the water for biological contaminants three times a week on-site and send another two samples a week to Alberta Health Services for lab testing. Still, this is untried territory. Because this is the first pool of its kind in the province, there are no provincial regulations to govern it. The City of Edmonton and AHS are figuring it out as they go.
It hasn’t been easy to get here. The $14.4-million project had to go back to the drawing board, literally, when the original design proved prohibitively expensive. It was supposed to open for trial runs last August, but wasn’t ready in time. It was supposed to open last month — but then the liner membrane on one of the filtration ponds was damaged and leaking and had to be repaired. So Wednesday’s grand opening has been longawaited, not just by people who want to swim, but by the pool staff, too.
Will it all work? I worry that managing the water quality, once the pool is filled with people, will be tricky. I worry that the pool, with its cooler water, will only be attractive and family-friendly on very hot days. This design is a real gamble.
But oh, it’s beautiful. When you open your eyes underwater, and nothing stings and nothing burns. When you do a lazy breaststroke, and the water feels caressing on your skin. When you get out of the pool and your suit and your hair don’t have that chlorine smell. When you look onto the lush green of Borden Park, and imagine yourself on a sunny lakeshore, far from here.
The pool is free for visitors this year. Why not go and make a splash?