BEACONSFIELD, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - July 20, 2017) - The Mayor of Beaconsfield, Georges Bourelle, and the members of the City Council, have mobilized all necessary resources over the past year to ensure the health and safety of the users of municipal public pools.
"The safety of everyone is our priority in the management of the public swimming pools, as it is for the volunteers who, with merits, assume the management of the facilities and the vitality of the activities that take place there," specified the Mayor.
To this end, a complete audit of the pools was carried out over the past year in close collaboration with the volunteer administrators of three public outdoor pool organizations in Beaconsfield in order to ensure the quality and safety of the public facilities. The pools at the Lord Reading Yacht Club and the Recreation Centre, as municipal facilities, also underwent a similar review, resulting in the implementation of necessary corrections.
Working closely with the Lifesaving Society of Québec - Québec's foremost authority for safety and aquatic regulations - and numerous professionals with structural, legal and insurance expertise, these works and procedures were undertaken with the specific goal of maintaining all sport activities in the municipal facilities, including the use of the diving boards.
"This is how we recently received the approval to allow shallow dives from the ledge of the swimming pools during competitions and training sessions," adds Mayor Bourelle.
The new safety requirements imposed by the Government of Québec with regard to private and public pools, especially the safety measures concerning the diving boards, no longer permit their use in municipal pools under the current conditions.
The administrators of the pools and the City have tried everything to allow their use, looking with specialists into repositioning the boards above the basins, as well as examining the possibility of excavating the basins, or raising the side walls to increase and thus reach the required depths.
All possible solutions examined by the experts - architects as well as legal advisors - lead to the same conclusions: the pools have to be rebuilt in order to allow the use of diving boards. The new government standards prohibit any modifications. For each community pool, the costs are so expensive that it would make more sense to build new ones, at a price of about three million dollars each.
In this context, it has been agreed with the administrators of each swimming pool association to prohibit the use of diving boards in order to guarantee the safety of pool users and to respect the civil liabilities of the concerned parties.
In addition to evaluating the pool facilities, the City also organized a training session for pool administrators in collaboration with the Lifesaving Society. Participants were given an overview of the industry's best practices in terms of operation, maintenance, safety, responsibilities, legal obligations and insurance coverage.
"Our public pools are a significant asset in our community. The involvement and dedication of the volunteers who assume their management is very important to us and we are very grateful to them. Just like ourselves, they act to ensure the health and safety of the citizens", concludes the Mayor of Beaconsfield.
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514 428.4410