Equipment problems have shuttered Red Hook’s sprawling public pool, leaving a neighborhood that’s home to Brooklyn’s largest public housing complex without a free place to swim as the city stares down a potentially deadly heat wave.
The Olympic-sized pool was closed for most of last summer, which park officials said was due to a broken pipe that took weeks to replace. The parks department vowed to resolve the issue ahead of this year’s pool season, which kicked off on Saturday.
But officials said that workers found last Friday that a filter plant at the facility had been flooded, ruining motors and other equipment. Now, officials said the space won’t be ready to open until at least the end of July.
Many neighborhood residents said that was too little, too late as temperatures are expected to exceed 100 degrees over the July 4 weekend.
The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning, and city officials urged people to find a cool space outside — such as a public pool — if their homes don’t have air conditioning.
Red Hook residents hoping for a cool respite at the pool on Monday were met with frustration instead. A handful of spray showers were running while the concrete pool sat empty. Two police officers hung out next to its empty basin.
“They need to get it together,” said Debby Santos, who had hoped to cool off at the pool with her daughter Paris. “She's very excited to go to the pool, and now she's gonna be sad when she sees that there's no pool and just sprinklers.”
Parks officials said they would have a more specific timeline on their plan to reopen the Red Hook pool by Thursday. The facility welcomes roughly 40,000 visitors during a typical summer, according to parks department data.
The Olympic-sized Red Hook pool opened 90 years ago. Parks officials can't seem to get the aging facility up and running.
The parks department on Monday told people looking to swim in Red Hook to head to the Douglass & Degraw pool in Gowanus, which is more than 1.5 miles away. But that pool abruptly closed around 1:30 p.m. after officials reported a person defecated in its water.
Parks workers were forced to clear out the swimmers and add chlorine, a process parks officials said was finished in time to open the space on Tuesday.
Alan Mukamal, a Red Hook resident who organizes the group Friends of Red Hook Pool, said the city owes residents a clearer explanation for why they keep losing access to swimming after last summer’s shutdown.
“I was baffled that they couldn't detect this other thing last year,” he said. “I understand it was underground. This sounds like they should have known about it. How did they not know about that?”
Adam Ganser, executive director of the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, said keeping pools open during extreme heat is a public safety issue.
“ We're about to be going into some of the hottest days of the year,” he said. “There is such a need in New York City for beaches, pools, and water features in our city's parks to be operable so that people can cool off.”
