Dans Papers - May 18, 2007 - Cannonball Into The Pool, Set Off The Alarm

Padlock the swimming pools in back of your homes, install ADT at all the entrances and hire a lifeguard. Yes, you. This was the extent of County Legislator John Cooper's plan several months ago to prevent children from drowning in swimming pools. While the death of a child is not something to take lightly, this initial bill was so poorly received that it was shot down in a 17-0 vote.

Prompted by the accidental drowning of nine-year-old Evangjelia Koco at the Santorini Beach Motel in Cutchogue last summer, Cooper took the measure to the extreme, calling for an intense policing of all pools, not just those in public places, but private pools as well. The proposed law would have made it mandatory for pools with a surface area of over 1,500 square feet to have a lifeguard and/or an alarm.

The bill was tabled initially when Legislator Lynne Nowick expressed concerns that this law would be bad for tourism. Forget the homeowners. By placing a lifeguard at every hotel and motel swimming pool, the inns would have to increase their room fees to pay the guards, this cost increase would discourage visitors. Currently, while lifeguards are mandatory at other public swimming pools, a grandfathered loophole allows motels and hotels to operate pools with almost no protection, save a sign that states there is no lifeguard on duty.

In a terrible twist of irony, the swimming pool at the Santorini Beach motel does not meet the proposed minimum size to require a lifeguard, which implies that, if this initial resolution had passed a year ago, it would have done nothing to protect young Evangjelia. Also, since there would be a size minimum on the lifeguard-mandatory pools, it could create an unfair advantage to inns with smaller pools and would prompt new hotels to install pools at 1499 square feet, avoiding the additional cost of lifeguards.

This week, Cooper's new and updated resolution, titled "Local Law to Improve Pool Safety and Protect Against Accidental Drownings," will be put to a vote. This is a scaled down version of the previous one, calling for alarms on the pool entrances and both public and residential locations. This is similar to Legislator John M. Kennedy, Jr. and Legislator Daniel P. Losquadro's proposal from 2005 to create a Suffolk County Swimming Pool Safety Task Force. Their focus was spawned by four drownings in private swimming pools on Long Island that summer.

A pool alarm works on a system called negative displacement. It hangs over the wall of the pool and can measure the displacement of water from anything 15 pounds and up. It then sends a wireless signal to the alarm base, which alerts whoever is supposed to be watching the children. The prices of these alarms can run from the low to mid-hundred dollar range. Currently, you are only required to have a lockable fence surrounding the pool area and all doors/gates leading to the pool must be self-closing.

When I was three or four years old, I was at a public swimming pool with my family and I fell into the water. The pool had a lifeguard on duty, but they did not notice I had gone under. It was my mother who dove in and pulled me out of the water. From a personal standpoint, while I believe that lifeguards are not a bad idea (though costly), policing one's own children should really be a requirement as well. Motels and hotels should keep the gate locked and make parents (not children) walk to the front desk and ask for a key -- just like bathrooms at truck stops. The parents then should have to sign an agreement that they will stay and watch their own children.

As for personal pools, lets face it, even if the resolution passes and becomes a law, few are going to follow it. It would be impossible to police all the private swimming pools in Suffolk County. And, while these alarms aren't a bad idea if you have small children, the majority of people who purchase these alarms aren't going to turn them on because it will create in inconvenience for them. Either they must remember to turn the alarms off before they go swimming, or they will have to splash out of the pool and sprint through the house, soaking wet, to turn the blaring sound off. I'm sure, like so many other resolutions in Suffolk County, this one will linger for a while and continue to be whittled away until it no longer requires anyone to be put out. Then again, who knows? Pretty soon, I may have to have a combination lock on my hot tub.