Instead, recycle it. a new law to regulate swimming pools for filtration facilities will help save millions of gallons of this precious resource.
By Ramesh Menon
India stands at the threshold of hydrological poverty, but that hasn’t stopped millions of liters of ground water being flushed into drains by thousands of swimming pools in the country. As there is no law on how water must be filtered and reused, pools have taken the soft option of simply emptying it once the water turns dirty, and then filling it up again. What should ideally be done is to pass the water through a filtration plant and recycle it.
A swimming pool should not be emptied until it needs repairs. This, incidentally, is the practice the world over. The water is filtered round-the-clock to keep it clean. In fact, this water quality is better than the raw water that comes in through pipes. It is monitored every day to ensure that swimmers are safe.
Shallow knowledge
Vivek Mishra, managing director, Premium Pools, who has built nearly 300 pools in India, points out: “In Europe, it is illegal to empty pools once they are filled. Even private pools in residences cannot do it. There is regular monitoring to ensure that water is not wasted and cleanliness requirements are adhered to. Awareness about the need to
conserve water is high abroad, while here, water is wasted as if there is plenty around. No wonder, the water table is plummeting every year.”
Mishra finds it difficult to convince educated builders to invest in filtration plants and build pools designed to save water. Incidentally, for a pool with an area of 8 feet by 24 feet and 4 feet depth, a proper filtration system will cost Rs. 2-3 lakh.
A five-foot pool with an area of 10 feet by 25 feet takes in 30,000-40,000 liters of water. Lavish bungalows and farmhouses that have larger pools of 20 feet by 40 feet or 30 feet by 40 feet can take in around 80,000 to 2 lakh liters of water.
Cities like Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad, which are mushrooming around the capital, have gated communities in elite group housing societies with pools, which take up to 3 to 10 lakh liters. Just imagine the colossal waste of water every week or two when pools are drained out.
Most of these colonies throw out the water after a week or 15 days, as it develops algae, and even stinks. Many builders create fountains or water bodies to add to the landscaping so that the value of the property is enhanced. But they do not care to put up a filtration plant, as there is no law to force them to do it. In fact, Noida Authority recently sent out a circular asking owners to change their water every few days so that dirty water doesn’t stagnate in pools!
Deep understanding
In Europe, where the swimming season lasts for just about three months, pools follow a special mechanism called winterization. As temperatures fall to around -6 degrees centigrade, the water freezes. As this can damage the walls and floor of the pool, agencies put in air balls in the water. These shrink, making more space for the ice to expand.
When Mishra visited Australia in 2007, he found that all the five-star hotels in Gold Coast refrained from operating any of their water features like fountains and waterfalls as there was a drought. But they were running their filtration plants, so that the water could be used the following year.
If filtration is not done continuously, water tends to get degraded. In India, most of the fountains run with fresh water that is drained away, once it gets murky. Even the Noida Golf Course has a swimming pool, which empties water every winter, as it does not have a system in place. The same goes for numerous leading developers, who boast of modern international standards.
Watered down laws
Getting a license for a swimming pool involves getting permissions from the police and the local municipal body. An inspection is carried out by the authorities before a license is granted. Shockingly, the owner has to give an affidavit, saying the water will be changed at least once a month or more often, as per the instructions of the licensing branch. This shows arbitrariness and lack of standards. Moreover, these seem to apply only to public and commercial pools. There is no mention of private pools, which take up millions of liters of water every year. Worse, information is only available online for grant of license in Delhi, indicating the lax attitude in the maintenance of pools.
It is vital to have a filtration system to sanitize the pool. After all, the water within contains harmful substances, such as chlorine, salt, acid, dirt particles, body oils, sunscreen residues and bacteria. The filtration system captures all these, and to work efficiently, filters must be cleaned every few days.
Many builders just fix a filter, hoping the pool will be clean. But the filtration process needs an elaborate piping system that distributes the filtered water evenly around the pool. It is of utmost important that builders with a poor record of maintaining pools are not given permission to build new ones.
Pools of disaster
The absence of guidelines has led to fatal accidents. Earlier this year, a water-proofing worker got electrocuted in a private pool in Uttar Pradesh, as there was a leakage of electricity. “All pools with lights should have what is called ‘earth leakage circuit breakup’. This ensures that even if there is a small leakage of power, it would automatically trip. Pools designed unscientifically are a disaster waiting to happen,” warns Mishra.
Lack of regulations showed up last month when the Etawah district magistrate Vidya Bhushan’s spine was seriously injured when he dived into a pool in Saifai, the home of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. The pool was reportedly half-empty when he dived into it from a two-meter-high board. It was constructed at a cost of `250 crore in the Chandagi Ram Stadium and was touted as an international pool.
Laws have to be created to dovetail safety guidelines, along with the ones that stop wastage of water. This is no rocket science, but the government agencies are not sensitive towards the need to save and conserve water.
South Australian legislation prohibits the disposal of backwash water from swimming pools into the storm water system as it could harm creeks, rivers, lakes and coastal waters. That’s the level of hygiene there. Of course, India has no such rule. “There is no awareness that water is a precious resource and should be used diligently,” says Mishra.
In the heart of the capital, the government constructed a huge water body in Pragati Maidan that held 20 lakh liters of water. It had to be changed frequently as there was no system to keep it clean. But good sense dawned. The pool area has now been emptied and disbanded and makeshift stalls have come up, selling various things.
However, a glaring example of lack of foresight is a park near Lucknow airport, built under the aegis of former chief minister Mayawati, which had a water body with a holding capacity of about two crore liters of water. But it had no plumbing for filtered water to flow. Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish.