Helen Bonner-Morgan from Vive La Vallette said despite the pool being shut, the cafe had been packed with young digger enthusiasts.
‘The cafe has been open and very busy with spectators,’ she said.
‘From the very beginning of the day, there were young, enthusiastic children looking at the pumps and the diggers and the firemen and so on.
‘So it’s been a great end of the school holiday spectacle.’
Watch: Work begins at Le Vallette
She said that work began early yesterday morning with a one-tonne digger being hoisted into place by a crane before the fire service employed high power pumps to remove the water.
This allowed work to dig out the base of the pool to begin at around 1pm.
‘Work has gone really well,’ she said.
‘The digger has managed to break out quite a lot of bedrock, as well as the silt and rubble. There’s a big pile of blackened rubble that’s now being scooped into bags, which will then get craned out and taken away for disposal.’
A number of Guernsey businesses are contributing resources and machinery for free and Ms Bonner-Morgan said it had been a fantastic example of what could be achieved with so many people working together.
‘We need to start by thanking F Watson & Son for their brilliant coordination of all the contractors, Bob Froome & Son, Ronez and Norman Piette,’ she said.
‘And then, of course, the fire service, because without that, we wouldn’t have got rid of as much water in the amount of time to give us that possible window for the digging.’
The diving platform has been shut since February after health and safety concerns that the water beneath it was not deep enough, but a campaign led by swimmer Adrian Sarchet has led to the work being carried out.
Further work is due to continue today, with the first job being once again removing all the seawater.
‘Unfortunately it takes just 15 minutes to fill back up,’ said Ms Bonner-Morgan.
‘The first job tomorrow will be opening the sluice gates when the surface of the walls are exposed, then there’s a waiting period and a certain amount of pumping, but tomorrow we’ll have less capacity to pump because we don’t have the fire service helping.’
She added that the work will then need to pass relevant inspections before the diving platform can be reopened.
‘Nothing is guaranteed’ she said. ‘We’re doing our best to get the diving board open for this summer, but we will still need to get that okay from the relevant department.’
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