The cafe and public toilets were closed yesterday and today while essential drainage work is carried out to rectify the issue and prevent a recurrence.
‘What we experienced at the Ladies’ Pool was a specific, localised drainage issue,’ said Vive La Vallette operations director Helen Bonner-Morgan.
‘We took it seriously, acted cautiously and have put the necessary measures and monitoring in place to prevent this particular issue from recurring.’
Any links to the broken outfall pipe at Fort George, which was found to be discharging sewage into Soldier’s Bay closer to the shore than it should have been earlier this summer, have been ruled out.
The pools themselves are remaining open during the current work, as are the upper-level kiosk and showers. A Portaloo is being provided while the toilets are out of use.
Ms Bonner-Morgan said the timing of the closure had been difficult, coming amid wider public concern about water quality and waste infrastructure on the island, and she understood why islanders had connected the two.
She said the pool might look simple from the outside, but that maintaining a historic tidal facility meant dealing with exposure to the sea and the elements ‘alongside infrastructure that has developed over many years, including shared cesspit and drainage arrangements’.
Closing the pool had been the right decision but a regrettable one, she said, given the work that had gone into building the space back up.
‘There was inevitably a lot of disappointment. But the overriding feeling at the time was that we, the States and Environmental Health all had a responsibility to act cautiously and put the safety and confidence of swimmers first.’
Environmental Health would not have allowed the pool to reopen unless satisfied it was appropriate to do so, she said, and monitoring would continue.
States natural environment team leader David Hubert said the recent water quality matter at the pool had been a localised drainage issue, and that the States continued to work with Vive La Vallette ‘to ensure that this facility can continue to be used and enjoyed by islanders’.
Recent testing of the water quality at the pools has met the ‘excellent’ standard.
Water levels in the pools are low at present because of leaks and neap tides that are not filling them.
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