It was a day that Oxbow area residents have been waiting for: the start of construction on the town’s new outdoor swimming pool.
Construction officially began on Monday. Jen Buchanan, who is the chairperson of the committee, said a lot of people have been asking questions about when the project would begin, and now they can see some work. Some were watching at the site once construction began.
The new swimming pool is near the community’s town hall, about a block north of the present swimming pool.
Materials and equipment have been brought in, and excavation is underway. The fencing was set up on Tuesday.
“The new pool is a junior Olympic pool, so it will have the six lanes, so then our speed swimming club (the Oxbow Silver Seals) can host provincial swim meets,” said Buchanan.
There will also be a splash park area and a zero-breach entry for easy access.
Other highlights will be a diving board and a climbing wall at one side of the pool.
“It angles back into the pool, so it’s like a rock climbing wall, and you can go up. If you fall off, you fall back into the pool,” said Buchanan.
A slide could be added in the future.
The new pool will be bigger than what the town has now. The current pool is too small to host higher-level speed swimming events. It’s also harder for some people to access because it doesn’t have a zero-breach entry. And the smaller and larger pools are separate.
“We currently don’t have any spray features,” Buchanan said.
While the old pool, which is nearly 50 years old, has been able to remain open, Buchanan doubts it would have survived through to the 2019 season.
“We were hoping that the old pool would open this year, and it did, but it probably wouldn’t last another year,” said Buchanan. “The pumps were breaking down, the boiler quit last year, and then it was in such rough shape it couldn’t be sand blasted any more. The ground water was coming up through the cement.”
The town has been filling holes, and patching and painting over them, in the last couple of years to keep the pool running.
The pool has received “amazing” support from the community, she said, as the committee has generated $1 million in donations and fundraising. Fundraising began six years ago, when the energy sector was thriving, but after the price of oil plunged in 2014, the new pool committee continued to receive support.
A couple of big donations recently helped out with the fundraising.
Buchanan hopes the new pool will be finished in the first or second week of July next year, but that will be dependent on weather conditions and other factors.
The opening of the new pool would be a little later than when the current pool’s traditional opening date, which is in late May or early June; this year the pool opened in the middle of June. But Buchanan said people are looking forward to when the new pool is finally open, as she believes it will be worth the wait.
