C. Falls pool open for meet despite massive leak

A 72,000-gallon-per-day water leak at the Pinewood Park swimming pool in Columbia Falls was stemmed to a 24,000-gallon daily leak by Friday.

And that, City Manager Bill Shaw said, was about as good as they could do and still hold the Columbia Falls swim team's annual meet this weekend.

Early arrivals for the swim meet started setting up camp Friday night in Pinewood Park along U.S. 2. By the time the starting gun sounds this morning, organizers expect 250 swimmers to be poised for competition - and their coaches, family and friends to be in town to cheer them on.

Between business generated at local restaurants, hotels and shops, and the extra traffic in town, the swim meet has a big impact on Columbia Falls. Traditionally the meet has been held on the Fourth of July weekend, but it serves as this season's opener.

The Pinewood Park pool had been scheduled to open full-bore for the season last Monday.

It was opened Monday morning for an open-swim session but, as swimmers used the pool, the temperature steadily dropped from about 75 degrees to the 60s, city finance director Susan Nicosia said.

Swim team members were able to practice there Monday, but when the pool was shut down that day they reached an agreement with The Wave in Whitefish to practice in its facility.

With the pool shut down, pool manager Jeff Steiner and Shaw checked the system and discovered the massive leak of heated water, with fresh water running in at a rate too fast for the boiler to heat it.

With the boiler constantly running to keep up with the demand, Shaw and Steiner then were faced with the need not only to find the leak but to fix a boiler.

They shut down the whole system and isolated the biggest gusher to a faulty plug. Replacing that plug on Wednesday, however, still left them with a leak of 1,000 to 1,300 gallons of water an hour.

All week, Shaw said, they have been at work checking pipes and trying to find the source or sources of the secondary leak, but still were stumped by Friday afternoon.

They made the call to go ahead with this weekend's meet. Shaw said they probably will have to shut down the pool again Monday to find the root of the problem.

Nicosia said the pool used up probably a month's worth of chemicals used to treat the water just since the beginning of the week.

Combined with replacement parts, she estimated the leak so far has cost the city more than $5,000.

The membrane-sided pool was started in 1999 and finished in 2000. It was built after a contentious process among the community and council members to replace the deteriorating concrete-sided pool that the city had used for many years.

From the first season, the pool's operation needed fine-tuning - and water leaks nearly always were part of the problem.

In the early years, the pool was kept filled with water throughout the winter, following one recommendation. But the unsavory clean-up process each spring to rid the pool of its winter debris and slime prompted a decision last fall to drain it this past winter.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com