• The law requires approved covers on every pool drain. If the pool has a single main drain, the operator must disable the drain or install a second anti-entrapment device. This can be an automatic shutoff system, a gravity drainage system, Safety Vacuum Release System or suction-limiting vent system.
A county pool-remodeling permit is required before modifications can be done.
• Potential penalties are up to $1.8 million in fines and prison time for "willful violations."
Enforcement is up to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which takes complaints through its Web site, cpsc.gov, or
1-800-638-2772. The Arizona Attorney General's Office will accept complaints and forward them to the federal agency, said spokeswoman Anne Hilby.
And this will sound eerily familiar to those who have been tangling with their reps over the CPSIA:
Since the law took effect, the county has seen pool-remodeling permit applications skyrocket from an average 58 per month last year to 190 per month since December. Chadwick's small office has only two employees to review the permits.
Property managers and contractors say that even if associations have the money to modify their pools, parts are sometimes hard to find and permit delays could keep neighborhood pools closed for the summer.
"The act is a good idea but implementation of it has been horrible," said Gilbert property manager Dave Heywood. Two condominiums that he manages, Ville Monaco in Tempe and Marlborough Mesa Villas in Mesa, have closed pools that aren't in compliance with the federal law.
"We know people have been dealing with backlogs in parts, labor and permits," Wolfson said. "But our advice to owners of public and semi-public pools is clear: you should not be open unless you are in compliance with the law."
Emphasis added. And yet, Congress hasn't given the CPSC additional funding or other resources, and Congress, Public Citizen, PIRG, et al continue to encourage people to overwhelm the already besieged CPSC offices with letters, phone calls, and emails, asking them to change what only Congress can alter.
As for the pool law, while on the surface, it looks okay to this mom, there are some things its supporters in Congress didn't tell us (as usual). Coyote Blog points them out.
Namely, that although in the article linked above, we read the that
Supporters of the act have said that in the past 20 years, at least 36 children have died and 147 others were injured after becoming trapped underwater by the suction of a pool or hot-tub drain.
We should not assume this means nearly 2 lives a year will be saved. That's because the death toll includes private swimming pools, but the law cannot. It covers only:
all the nation's public and semi-public pools.
That includes pools at apartments, hotels, condominiums and in neighborhood associations.
Which makes this yet another feel good but expensive law which perhaps does more harm than good.
There are more private pools than public. Far more children die every year in bathtubs, cars, and poisoning incidents, but Congress saw fit to make this law (one which the blogger at Coyote Blog believes does not pass Constitutional muster) because one of the tragic deaths (and I do not want to trivialize the grief and agony of the family members of any of the children who have so terribly lost their lives)- was the grand-daughter of Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Pin It
