The 2.6 Million Dollar Salt System (cont.)

I’ve been keeping an eye on the renovation of the wave pool and enclosure at the Southland Leisure Centre this last year. I first brought it up here where I talked about the City of Calgary being forced to perform a 2.6 million dollar renovation of their wave pool a mere 31 months after the addition of a Lectranator commercial salt system. To recap that story, what happened was, “in a wave pool situation -- which no one could have really anticipated -- the salt is going airborne as a result of the wave action,’ said Ron Krell, manager of Southland Leisure Centre. ‘We're getting a coating of salt in the leisure centre equipment.’, and all that airborne salt caused a whopping 2.6 mil damage.

EDIT:

Well, today I'm doing something that I've never done before on this blog. There was a rather long blog piece that followed that opening paragraph. A little piece of detective work where I tried to put together disparate pieces of the puzzle about what happened with the indoor wave pool at the Southland Leisure Centre, and about halfway through the day I received a very lucid explanation of why I was wrong in some of my assumptions. So, I have deleted the rest of this post.

In it's place, I am posting the contents of an e-mail I received from Mr. Ron Krell, the manager of the Southland Leisure Centre. He talks a lot about the entire renovation of the Centre and all of the contributing factors. I found it all interesting. But if you just want to specifically know How The Salt System Ate The Leisure Centre, I've highlighted those passages. The emphasis (bold print; italics) is mine.

Hi there: I had the opportunity to read your blog and I wanted to let you know that your comments about the renovation and lifecycle replacement of 25 year old equipment are a bit off the mark. It is somewhat understandable as you are not privy to all the information about the project and only gleaning snippets of information from various sources.

I will provide some further background that may assist in clarifying how some of the work for the Southland Leisure Centre project came to be and how that relates to some of your comments and observations. The original renovation that was approved by City Council was for $8 million and approved in June 2006. This was to include upgrades and updating to the Southland Leisure Centre Locker Rooms, add an Aquaplay Family Water Feature, Steamroom, New Fitness Expansion Area with new fitness equipment, Elevator and Accessible Service Counter. The Council approved funding also allowed for painting most of the common areas and pool to provide for an updated look to complete this portion of the renovations as well as a Council mandated Public Art Project which is part of the Capital funding formula. This funding had been provided to keep the Centre updated and make improvements so that our base of Customers would continue to enjoy using it and of course, attract new users. If you have had the opportunity to use the Centre in the last few years, for example, you would not have been impressed with the locker rooms as they were impossible to keep clean, i.e. old tiling, old grout that was difficult to repair and clean, damaged lockers, etc…….many areas were in need of updating………nothing worse than coming into a public facility and finding it in poor condition in spite of our best efforts to make the old stuff look good!

As for the Salt System……a decision was made in 2004 to install a Salt Lectranator system at Southland. It was installed in November 2004 as an add on to our current pool system with the intent that it would replace Chlorine Gas (as you know Chlorine Gas is a volatile, dangerous and difficult substance to work with). The filtration was a DE (Diatemacous Earth) based system. The intent to replace the chlorine gas with the salt system as recommended by a Consultant showed that such a system could work in a large wave pool provided that the proper number of Lectranator cells were specified. Based on this information, the project went ahead. Since the original install date in November 2004, the salt system never quite seemed to work properly, i.e. did not produce enough Chlorine to meet the demand. As a result, the Consultant determined that the lectranator system must have been slightly undersized and additional cells were added in March 2005. Even after the upsized installation, the system never met its targets and further to that, we began experiencing salt issues in our mechanical areas, exposed metal surfaces, humidification systems, etc….

The system did not perform and the situation was deteriorating. As you can imagine, the entire system was original (25 years old) with the exception of the newer salt lectranators. In April 2007, I started as the Manager of this Leisure Centre. After a review of the mechanical areas, the aging equipment, the noticeable salt damage and concerns with our inability to meet chlorine demand versus bather load, concerns with DE (carcinogenic material), leaking and corroded piping, large amounts of staff time trying to troubleshoot the system, assurances from the supplier that the system would work when it repeatedly became more apparent that it was not working, etc…..………It was decided with the support of the Director of Recreation and the General Manager of Community Services to approach City Council outlining the concerns about this situation. As a result of a report to Council in June 2007, approval was given for a further $2.6 million to update the pool system at the Southland Leisure Centre. The salt system and DE were removed and replaced with Liquid Chlorine, UV and Sand Filters along with an older boiler system, piping, etc…. and ……..we know that these systems work well and will position us to operate more efficiently and effectively for the next 20+ years.

In today's dollars, the Southland Leisure Centre's replacement value is in the neighbourhood of $125 million and has approx. 1.8 million visitors per year. The decision to update and upgrade the pool mechanical systems was not taken lightly and the expenditure is a positive one to protect the long term operational integrity of this facility. As you can see, the $8 million and the $2.6 million came about as separate projects. As well, I recognize that some of the facts and assumptions that you flagged were taken from bits and pieces of information, media, etc……..Please note that the Village Square Leisure Centre renovation was also approved by Council in June 2006 in the amount of $8 million. They do 'not' have a salt system, but do have gas chlorine which will be changed out as part of their project. That Centre is also 25 years old and in need of various lifecycle replacements, updating, etc……..

This is the first time that I have viewed your information and I appreciate the opportunity to provide some information that may help clarify why we did the system change here at the Southland Leisure Centre. If you have any questions, please contact me at the numbers provided below.

Thank you
Ron Krell Manager

Southland Leisure Centre # 159

So there you have it. No need to speculate any more. It wasn't high free available chlorine with no stabilizer that caused all that corrosion, as so many members of the Head In The Sand Society have speculated. You have it right here, in the words of the manager who had to deal with all of this. Truth is, the Lectranator never even produced enough chlorine to meet bather load. it's hard to imagine not enough free available chlorine could have destroyed the Leisure Centre equipment in some 31 months, when sufficient free available chlorine from gas cylinders hadn't done it in the twenty plus years prior.

It is exactly as I've always said; It's the Salt, Folks. It's the Salt.

But there's more.

I worte back to Mr. Krell seeeking permission to publish his e-mails in this blog. His response (oncea again, emphasis is mine);

Hi: sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I would be comfortable with you printing my response for your blog....I cannot remove the non disclosure statement as that is automatically added to all of our emails at work. However, I would approve your reprinting my wording verbatim as long as it is stated factually. Would that work for you?? Let me know what you think.

Also, I would be interested to hear more information about salt systems.................my opinion based on the experience here is that I believe that salt systems can work in smaller applications without too much difficulty.....however, I don't trust salt over the longer period as I think that it eventually permeates the equipment and corrodes it.

Mid-size Wave Pools can utilize it with mixed results, i.e. Collicut Centre in Red Deer, but will show damage to equipment eventually. That Centre opened in 2000 and it is showing signs of salt damage here in 2008.....not as bad as what we experienced at Southland, but enough to be of concern.

Large Wave Pools seems to be a non-starter for a salt application. It failed at Millwoods Pool in Edmonton and now had very poor results here at the Southland Leisure Centre (230,000 gallon US). I am not sure that the Engineering Consultant had enough information about salt to determine that it could not work.....I believe that they took the approach that the system designed for Millwoods was undersized and that by merely upsizing the salt lectranators, they could achieve the perfect operating formula. It did not work as outlined in my previous email. I suspect that they were surprised by this, as we were.

My guess is that salt in the larger applications with large bather loads reaches a threshold level at which point the salt cannot convert to chlorine as quickly as required and even adding additional salt cells does not make a difference.....reaches a saturation point. I am not a chemist, but it is the closest that I can come to describing the situation based on my Grade 12 and University Chemistry courses.

I would not be able to prove this theory, but my experience tells that that I am probably not far off on this one. Your thoughts??

Ron

So, we're not just talking about a single facility that experienced heavy and expensive corrosion as a result of installing Lectranator commercial salt systems. According to Mr. Krell, "it failed at Millwood", "had very poor results" at his facility, and after eight years, Colicut Centre in Red Deer "is showing signs of salt damage", "enough to be concerned".

It turns out it's just a matter of time and they all experience these issues. I'm going to try to contact some of these facilities to find out more about their unique situations. Seems to me that with all this Public Money being spent to fix the issues wrought by Salt Chlorine Generation, that some bright-eyed reporter at the CBC should be interested in what is apparently common knowledge among the folks working with these systems in an indoor environment.

Since he'd asked for my thoughts, I wrote back to Mr. Krell and gave him as condensed a version as I could of why I think it's utter insanity to install a salt system on any pool or spa:

My opinion is that the core issue with salt systems is that they use salt. Salt is a corrosive. There's no way around it. All chlorine ends up putting salt (sodium chloride) into our pool or spa water. The new system you mentioned that you've installed on your wave pool, the liquid chlorine feeder, has one of the highest salt contents of any of the bottled/packaged sanitizers. But it's still nowhere near the level of salt that we start with on a salt pool. Typically, our tap water is below 250 ppm (parts per million) chloride. That's been established here in the US as the "level of taste" by EPA and it's the target that most water districts shoot for. So, with a freshly filled pool, that's where you start. Then you introduce sanitizer. Over time, you will increase that sodium chloride level to as much as 1,500 ppm or 2,000 ppm. Usually, that takes years. And especially in something like a wave pool, where so much water is aerated and lost and you're constantly introducing low chloride fill water to make up for it, you may never see those elevated sodium chloride levels. But even if you do someday end up with that high sodium chloride level, you will also have accompanying elevated levels of calcium and manganese and iron and copper and everything else that's in our water supply system and that bathers end up excreting into our pools. That's the point that, before salt systems came along, we would drain and refill our pools. The old standard was 3,000 ppm TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) maximum.

So, we never had reason to worry too much about all the different mechanisms by which sodium chloride could damage our pools and our pool enclosures. There would be isolated incidences of pool enclosure roof collapses, and the investigation would usually point chloride stress corrosion of the supporting bolts. But as a whole, industrywide, these were very isolated instances.

http://corrosion-doctors.org/Forms-SCC/swimming.htm

http://www.thefabricator.com/MetalsMaterials/MetalsMaterials_Article.cfm?ID=731

Both of those links cite the same instance of a pool enclosure roof collapse due to chloride stress corrosion.

However, the use of calcium chloride as an accelerator in the mixing of concrete has been cited in many instances as the main contributor to subsequent chloride stress corrosion that results in the earlier than anticipated failure of metal bolts and support structures worldwide.

So, as you see, it doesn't matter where the chloride comes from, the result is the same; premature aging of the components of whatever structure we are trying to maintain, whether it be a bridge or a swimming pool or it's enclosure... or the bolts in a waterslide.

This is the point where I feel that my industry has departed from reality on the subject, and I think it's for no other reason than greed. Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

And therein lies our problem. The internet is lousy with reports of salt damage to everything in nature. Ask a metallurgist at what level salt will corrode and they'll most likely tell you that, in the right circumstances, pitted against the right substance, salt will corrode at levels as low as 10 and 20 ppm. Ask a highway maintenance engineer what the number one cause of road damage is and he'll tell you it's the salt they use to keep the roads clear in the winter.

The things you've told me in your last e-mail support what I'm saying - and what scientists have been saying for hundreds of years. You mentioned that a mid sized wave pool in Collicut Centre in Red Deer is showing signs of salt damage after 8 years. Your own wave pool showed signs thirty-one months after salt system installation. I have met customers who had stainless steel filter tanks and put salt systems on their residential pools, and within one year they had to buy a new fiberglass filter (about $1,200 for a residential model) and by the next year, their limestone coping and decks were spalled and looked thirty years old instead of two or three. None of these things would have occurred and the normal life cycles in each of these instances would have been 20 and 30 years without salt (I service some stainless steel DE filters that are easily 20 years old, on non-salt pools, of course).

Yet, the pool industry is simply ignoring science so that they have another gadget to sell to pool owners. And it's a gadget that comes with a significant after market. Salt cells, even the best ones out there, are typically rated for about 10,000 hours of operation. In a commercial environment, with 24 hour a day operation, that's not much more than a year. And from everything I can find, manufacturers customarily provide a one year warranty for commercial use. When you imagine the after market in salt cell sales - at $500 to $800 per cell - if every pool were converted to salt chlorine generation, it's easy to see why it's hard to get objective information from the manufacturers. And it's impossible to see where the highly touted savings over other chlorination methods comes in.

I know I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist here. That's not it. I just feel that the sale of salt systems has become Sales and Marketing without Borders. There is applicable research that's been done on the effects of salt on every component that makes up every configuration of a swimming pool. There is research on it's effects on stone, concrete, metals - such as copper, aluminum, brass, cupro nickel, and all types of stainless steel - and in every instance, the research proves that damage is accelerated proportional to the increase in chloride levels over background.

Further, there is abundant research available on the debilitating effects of stray current corrosion on submerged or partially submerged metals - such as ladders, rails, lights, light conduit, heater heat exchangers, etc. Stray current corrosion is often called "electrolysis", the very process whereby we create chlorine from salt. For example. I replaced a 20 amp fuse on a residential salt system the other day. That fuse provided power to the salt cell. Hence, that salt cell was receiving just shy of 20 amps of current from plate to plate, in the water, up until that fuse blew. Stray current corrosion is usually measured in milliamps. There are indications of it's damage nearly everywhere a salt system is installed. There are now pool specialty equipment companies that sell zinc anodes to mute the effects of stray current corrosion. Yet the manufacturers continue to insist that it doesn't exist, that because they met UL 1081 standards in a laboratory environment, that the discussion is off the table.

Well, that's all the news that fit to print for this installment. Happy Trails to all you Salt Reps trying to work up snappy comebacks when this stuff comes up in your Lying Contests.., I mean Sales Seminars.

The 2.6 Million Dollar Salt System


Someone sent me an interesting news clip last week. I’d tell you where I got it, but it came from a source pitching another alternate sanitation technology. And if I cited them, then all you guys who think I’m just a shill for some other pool gadget or the chlorine tablet manufacturers would point to that and say, “See? See? The Pool Guy’s a whore just like us.”

And my only response to that is to say; I know you are, but what am I?

The news clip was just a couple line item. When I first read it, I thought I’d post it in the next blog piece and be done with it. But then, I started Googling, and that’s a lot like falling down a rabbit hole. One thing leads to another and to another and another and pretty soon a picture begins to emerge. And so it becomes a whole story that doesn’t start with the couple line news clip. The news clip comes about three quarters of the way through the story, as it turns out.

It starts like this: On October 29th, 2004, the City of Calgary, Alberta, Canada posted a news release titled “Southland Leisure Centre Pool Switches to Salt Generated Chlorine”. Here’s a link to the press release.

Now, pay attention to that date, okay? That’s less than three years ago.

And here’s how the press release started:

“CALGARY - A safer alternative for Pool Water Sanitization.

Did you know that according to the Salt Institute, there are more than 14,000 uses for salt - from flavouring pheasant to mummifying Egyptian Pharos [sic]?

Did you also know that salt offers a cleaner, safer alternative to using chlorine gas to sanitize public swimming pool water?

As part of its annual maintenance the Southland Leisure Centre is offering patrons a positive replacement to chlorine gas, by installing a new chlorine generating system, via the use of salt.”

Geez, doesn’t that sound like something a Salt Rep would write? I can just hear the phone conversation that led up to that opener. “Hey there, Salt Guy. I’m writing this darn press release for the new pool salt system and I need a snazzy opening. Howzabout you fax me something spiffy, eh?”… I’m not sure they say snazzy and spiffy up in Calgary, but I do know they say, eh. A lot. Anyway, you get the drift.

The press release goes on to tout all the normal BS that we’ve come to expect from Salt Reps when they lie about their systems. Like:

“The conversion will be much safer for staff, and save money over time through fewer chemical costs”.

Which is just so not true. While chlorine gas isn’t something most of us even want to fool with, we all know it is by far the cheapest conventional method of chlorinating a pool. If you want to argue that, argue it with Bob Lowry, who has actually written The Book on chlorine. He also wrote a booklet, Guide to Chlorine, about the different types of chlorine for Service Industry News many, many years ago. It’s on the Required Reading List for IPSSA membership and it’s the source of many of the questions on the IPSSA Water Chemistry Certification Test. In fact, that three book set that he wrote are where ALL of the questions for that test come from. So, if you want to say I’m wrong, then I’m wrong in some pretty good company. Wouldn’t you say?

Hence, it’s a foregone conclusion, ergo an accepted industry standard, that it doesn’t get any cheaper than using chlorine gas. And while the Pro-Salties will clamor that all you need for a salt system is a little salt when you fill it up and a little acid every once in a while, they always leave out that part about buying new salt cells every 2 to 4 years. Imagine how many thousands of dollars it would take to replace all of the salt cells on all of the pools at the Southland Leisure Centre every couple or so years. But that, as we shall see later, is the least of their worries.

The press release goes on to say “The reduction of hazardous materials is also better for the environment, and completely removes the chance of a dangerous chlorine leak.”

They didn’t mention how installing the salt system is really just a hazard trade-off. Salt systems introduce the chance of dangerous hydrogen gas explosions, like the one that occurred at the Fremantle Leisure Centre in January 1997, when there was a buildup of hydrogen gas and an explosion, an accident so significant that a 1997 accident report published by the Australian government cited it thus; “The most significant incident for the year occurred at the Fremantle Leisure Centre where a hydrogen gas explosion forced the evacuation of approximately 600 people from the premises during the busy summer holiday period.”

Here’s a link to the whole report.

and here’s a link to a follow-up safety announcement where they were still talking about it five years later.

Of course, the Pro-Salties will be clashing spears on shields again here, saying that I exaggerate the accidents that occur with exploding salt systems, although the internet is littered with reports and anecdotes of Salt Water Chlorine Generator explosions. But it’s alright for them to rave about “dangerous chlorine leaks” when it comes to chlorine gas.

Sure, that’s fair.

The other part of the statement that’s so bogus is about the reduction of hazardous materials being better for the environment. They made a big deal about this same thing in Calgary Transit System’s annual Envirosystem Report, where they touted the Leisure Center’s conversion to salt as this huge step forward in improving the air quality in all of Calgary. As if they were having chlorine gas leaks a mile a minute – or I guess it would be a kilometer a minute in Canada, eh? Here’s the report.

Click on Envirosystem Report 2004 and scroll down to pdf page 9, report page 7, and read, “Recreation eliminated chlorine gas for pool sanitation at the Southland Leisure Centre. The new disinfection system generates chlorine from salt. The salt eliminates the potential for a chlorine gas release on site and the hazards associated with exposure.”

Then scroll down to pdf page 13, report page 11 and see where they enumerate it again as one of their positive steps forward in eliminating the deadly hazards of chlorine gas emissions.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My…

Then they turn right around, in the section of the report titled “Managing Our Impact – Water”, and talk about the potentially disastrous effects of road salt and how “ROADS partnered with Parks and Wastewater to build the 194th Avenue Roads Maintenance Depot to address Environment Canada’s requirement to reduce concentrations of chloride from road salt that could affect plants, aquifers and watersheds. The Depot uses facilities and practices to minimize wind erosion, run-off and leaching of road salt products. The site includes two large tent structures on an impermeable base, for storing road salt materials. A lined containment pond was constructed adjacent to the storage area to provide emergency containment in the event of a release. Ongoing environmental monitoring is conducted at the site. Parks reviewed the Biophysical Impact Assessment for the site and assisted with planting appropriate trees, shrubs and site vegetation. Wastewater assisted in the design and regulatory approvals of the runoff catchment features.”

You see, this salt stuff is so bad for the environment that they had to build a lined containment pond to protect against an accidental release of… Hey, wait a minute… They used those same words back in Air Quality to talk about the deadly threat of an accidental chlorine gas release. And they fixed the chlorine gas thing by replacing it with salt… Hmmm… It must just be something that only Canadian Civil Servants can understand. It must be so deep that I’m just not able to grasp it. Let me review all this stuff again…

Oh, here it is. I found it. Go back to the press release. This explains everything.

“Although the centre will use salt to sanitize the pool, the water itself will not technically be salt water.”

Well, that’s A Horse of a Different Color. Because then, when they need to dump their pools for routine maintenance, they won’t have to worry about dumping that water into a containment tank or anything. Since it’s not salt water, they’ll be able to dump it right on the ground.

Okay. So let’s give ‘em kudos. They're not as think as we dumb they are. A little smoke and mirrors and viola, they get environmental credit both ways. And after all, what’s more important? Saving the Environment? Or The Appearance of Saving the Environment?

Now. let’s fast forward two years and seven months, and this headline appears in the Calgary Herald; “City left with pool’s $2.6M tab”. Here’s the link.

The story starts off, “Council is being asked to approve $2.6 million in emergency funds to fix the wave pool at Southland Leisure Centre, after recreation officials discovered a switch to salt water has corroded the filtration systems.”

There’s one thing to correct here. It’s not the filtration systems that got screwed up by the salt. That’s just an indicator of the depth of knowledge that most reporters have about swimming pools. Whatever goes wrong, it’s the filter. Ask them to point out the filter on an equipment pad and 99 out of a 100 won’t get it right. More correctly, it’s the whole damn building that houses the indoor wave pool that’s corroding. You see, they foolishly made everything out of metal. They thought that it would be okay, though, because even though they were pouring salt into the pool, they weren’t actually using salt water. The 2004 press release said so. Because anybody with an ounce of sense would have known that the wave pool was going to agitate the water and aerate it and create a salt spray – hmmm… there’s a funny expression; Salt Spray. Where have I heard that used before? Oh, yes, I remember now; as in ocean waves crashing against the shore and creating a Salt Spray.

But since they weren’t using real salt water, they didn’t think about it. “ ‘What's happening is, in a wave pool situation -- which no one could have really anticipated -- the salt is going airborne as a result of the wave action,’ said Ron Krell, manager of Southland Leisure Centre. ‘We're getting a coating of salt in the leisure centre equipment.’”

“Which no one could have really anticipated…” That’s Civil Servant for, “It didn’t occur to us and the salesman never brought it up, so we spent your money to buy this overpriced albatross and now we want more of your money to fix the damage it has wrought.”

Because, pardon me for pointing it out, but anyone who’s walked on an ocean beach where there’s even the slightest wave action can tell you that when they finished their walk their lips tasted like salt, from – once again – the Salt Spray.

And that’s the part about journalism that blows me away, and I think it’s more than half the reason we perceive that journalists are in bed – in the figurative sense, of course – with the politicians and the bureaucrats they interview. Here’s this woman, Colette Derworiz, interviewing this guy, Ron Krell, and he makes this CYA statement “a wave pool situation -- which no one could have really anticipated -- the salt is going airborne as a result of the wave action,” and she just dutifully writes it in her notebook, without asking the obvious follow up, “Well, have you never been to the beach, Ron? Come on, fella. That’s a pretty lame defense against 2.6 million dollars in damages. Surely you’ve got something better for us than that.”

Or, she could have asked, “Didn’t your Salt Reps warn you about this? Didn’t they bring up the point about the salt spray? Had they never been to the beach, either?”

Or, she could have asked, “Is the Southland Leisure Centre’s wave pool the only one that’s been affected this way? Are there any other wave pools around the country or in the US suffering the same sort of damage?”

Or, she could have asked, “What is the Salt System manufacturers position on this? What do they have to say about their system causing 2.6 million dollars worth of damage in 2 years and seven months?”

But she didn’t.

So, Ron dodged all those bullets. But still, he had to go, hat in hand, to the City Council and ask for the 2.6 million beans to fix up the damage that the wholly unanticipated salt spray had caused in a little over two and a half years. Say it slow so you get the full effect; two million six hundred thousand dollars. Even in Canadian dollars, that’s a buttload of money. In fact, that’s $2,760.00 Canadian every day since they converted to salt.

Well, poop. There goes the all the money they saved converting to salt.

Back to Colette Derworiz’ report in the Calgary Herald:

“But the committee members refused to approve the expenditure, saying there wasn't enough information to make a decision. ‘This is a lot of money,’ Ald. Diane Colley-Urquhart told the committee.

Another alderman, Gord Lowe, said he wouldn't support the spending until council receives a detailed cost analysis, a full history of the conversion to salt water, a legal opinion on the issue and a report on whether the salt has damaged any other parts of the pool, including the cement.

‘I think there's a disease, and we're looking at a very big symptom here,’ he said…. According to Wednesday's report, the wave pool's system started corroding after the installation of a salt filtration system in November 2004.”

I bet you can guess my favorite part. It’s the “I think there’s a disease, and we’re looking at a very big symptom here”. Gee, that sounds like what I’ve been saying for a long time. And I’ve been called the vilest things by some of the biggest greedheads in our business for saying it.

But, it turns out that I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT I WAS RIGHT.

Did I mention that I was right?

So, there’s that.

Anyway, it turns out that the Calgary Council did finally agree to shell out the money to repair the salt damage to the wave pool and it’s enclosure. Here’s the link to that story.

Here’s how it went: “Council approved the repair Monday after receiving a detailed cost breakdown, a full history of the conversion and a closed-door update from the law department on any recourse for council to consider.”

Once again, I bet you can spot my favorite part. It was the “closed-door update from the law department on any recourse for council to consider”.

So, to recap, this is how it looks like it all went down, and let me say up front that this is speculation on my part. I’m filling in the blanks here. I tried to get a hold of Ron Krell, the Southland Leisure Centre manager, and find out how it all really went down, but, as they say in the newspapers, my “call was not immediately returned”. So, here goes.

A Salt Rep came along and told the folks in Calgary how great salt would be for their indoor pools. The Salt Rep said his company had tons of experience converting Leisure Centres just like theirs to salt all over the world. He probably didn’t mention the one in Fremantle that exploded. But like I said, I’m guessing.

They told them that it was going to be expensive up front because they needed lots and lots of commercial grade Salt Water Chlorine Generators to chlorinate that much water – the Wave Pool weighs in at one million liters, which is 264,000 gallons in the Lower Forty-Eight - but it would be worth it when the big bucks started rolling in from all the money they were going to save by not buying chlorine gas. I know it’s hard not to laugh at that part, but we must do our best.

Then, when corrosion started showing up, the Salt Reps probably tried to blame it on low stabilizer levels in the water, because that’s what they do every place else. But then, the janitor probably told them that when he wipes down the railings and such, he ends up with a salty residue on his rag and the light went off in everybody’s head at the same time. At least in the heads of all of those who had ever been to the beach and seen a real wave.

“It’s the salt!” they cried, and started casting about, searching for the Salt Rep, hoping to catch him and maybe drag him behind their trucks for a while. But he was nowhere to be found, since he was paid in full. And so they had a meeting to decide who was going to tell the Calgary City Council that they were going to have to spend an extra 2.6 million dollars on the Wave Pool this year, and Ron got the short straw.

Now, the City Fathers, seeing how badly Ron and his crew got screwed by this Salt Rep, are looking at their options to sue the crap out of him – or her, in that PC gender-neutral sort of way. I mean, it’s a cinch that the Salt Rep isn’t going to write them a check for the damages. And neither is the Salt System manufacturer. Because that would set a precedent, wouldn’t it?

Incidentally, there’s a picture of the Wave Pool at the Southland Leisure Centre. You can find it here.

Warning: It’s nearly a 10 meg pdf file and takes a while to load.

It’s the SP&S swimming pool supply catalog. The picture of the Wave Pool is on pdf page 48. You can see there’s lots of surfaces to corrode. It was provided to SP&S courtesy of the Southland Leisure Centre. I don’t know why the Wave Pool’s picture is in this catalog. Maybe Southland is one of SP&S’s customers… Do you think? No… Could it be?

Gosh, I don’t know. And it wouldn’t be fair to speculate on something that important.

Because whoever sold this salt system without thinking about the wave action and the salt spray is in for the skinning of a lifetime. $2.6 million dollars worth of a skinning. Not to mention the skinning still to come from all the other indoor wave pools they’ve probably put it on since they did this one.

I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I have to say it.

I TOLD YOU SO.

Another thing that would make this whole situation laughable if it weren’t so sad; Go here.

It’s on the same City of Calgary website that the Enviro report is on. It’s their Water Hardness FAQ’s. I’m going to cut and paste the second FAQ on the page:

“What are the health issues surrounding water hardness?

Health Canada has not established drinking water guidelines for hardness because there are no known health effects associated with calcium and magnesium minerals in drinking water. However, conventional softening systems (those which use salts) may not be suitable for people on sodium-restricted diets. It is recommended that consumers thoroughly research the various water softener systems available prior to deciding whether or not to soften their water. Water Softeners should be connected so that the water you are drinking is not softened.”

So, salt can be bad for your health. And salt is definitely bad for the environment, as evidenced by all the hoops they have to jump through just to keep a couple of piles of salt laying around for road de-icing. But it’s great for swimming pools!

Huh?

The real shocker is that even after the salt water in the Wave Pool has caused 2.6 million dollars of damage, as far as I can tell by the reports, they’re only going to take the salt system off the Wave Pool and leave it on all the rest of the City’s indoor and outdoor pools.

What’s that old saying? Screw me once, shame on the President… or something like that.

And then, just because I can’t say enough bad things about salt, here’s a delightful little gem of investigative/editorial news reporting:

The Ancaster News, in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, reported this past Friday, June 29th, 2007 the following news item:

“It is likely that the city's Dundas indoor swimming pool (following the very questionable decision to convert the well established disinfection system installed in 1971, to a salt chlorine gnerator which requires a minimum sodium chloride level of 3,000 parts per million) is one of major polluters of the sanitary waste water plant.

Each backwash and water dumping of 20 litres per bather per day as required by provincial codes, not only wastes volumes of clean, filtered, heated, and chemically balanced water; this 'new' system also adds salts far in excess of the maximum levels for chlorides as set out in the City of Hamilton sewage discharge bylaws.
Guess who pays the by-law infraction charges if any are applied?

We are also advised that each of the four cells installed at the Dundas pool cost about $10,000 yearly to replace as well as the electricity to run them.

Backyard pool owners might also become suspects should they install one of the smaller chlorine generators. If it sounds too good to be true....”

This is a follow up to a story that ran the week before, titled “City cracking down on polluter: sewer boss”.

You can read about it here.

The city of Dundas has hired a dozen extra enforcement officers in the last year and a half to enforce the new bylaw limits for harmful volatile organic compounds enacted last August. In the June 22nd article, they talk about their efforts to get companies into compliance without shutting them down, how to work with them to achieve the goal of compliance while still allowing them to operate. It also points out that this approach doesn’t always work:

“In the past, compliance agreements have not always led to quick action. The city's lone such existing agreement, for instance, is for Stoney Creek's Taro dumps and has been in place since 1993.

When it was struck, then-owner Philip Services Corp. promised to build a pretreatment plant within 18 months -- predominantly to deal with high chloride levels…

The plant never materialized, Philip went bankrupt, and its successor negotiated a new deal in 2001 that prompted a review of the city's sewer bylaw.”

Then, the June 29th story points out that the municipal pool is designed to be out of compliance every time it backwashes it’s filters to be in compliance with public health ordinances.

And just like with the Southland wave pool damage, you have to go back and lay the blame at the feet of the company who sold these Salt System to these municipalities. They are ultimately responsible for the damages done and for the environmental laws violated. For them to say, “we didn’t know” is a sorry, sad, worn out excuse, and hardly of any consequence when computing damage claims.

Every week there's yet another story of how salt destroys everything it touches. And every week, the Salt Reps say, "Well, yeah, but that's it. But it's not our fault. We didn't know. Everything else is okay." Until the next story comes out and they say, "Well, yeah, but that's it. We didn't..."

When will we all stop letting them get away with saying, “We didn’t know”?