Local Programs Are Thirsting for Water

With Success Comes Crowded Lanes

Things could hardly be better for swimmers in the greater Washington region. Membership numbers rise year after year. Local clubs churn out talent and grow in national esteem. The region's thriving summer leagues are considered a national model.

But there is one problem.

The area is running out of water.

This is not news to all of the swim parents who stumble out of bed at 3:45 a.m. to shuttle their burgeoning stars to 4:30 a.m. practices, the only time lanes are available for many club teams. It is not news to coaches who scratch and claw for practice time at facilities that are decreasing lane rentals or charging higher rates.

And it is not news to age-group swimmers so accustomed to sharing lanes with six or seven others during workouts that, when they get to meets, they are all but incapable of following the black line in the middle of each lane. They swim, as they do during jam-packed practice sessions, down the right side and back on the left.

It is, in effect, swimming in a circle -- precisely the route John Ertter, Potomac Valley Swimming's executive director, often feels he is taking when he seeks solutions to the strange water shortage in the District's suburbs, a region with dozens and dozens of pools.

"The problem is driven simply by our success," Ertter said. "We probably have more pools in the greater Washington area than any part of the country. But because of the numbers, it still creates an imbalance . . . and it's going to get worse if nothing is done."

Building new pools is not easy. Some problems are obvious: a lack of available real estate and premium land prices in one of the most expensive areas in the nation. There is this, too: 50-meter pools designed only for competition bleed money regardless of where they are located, experts say, because they are so expensive to run.

Other apparent remedies, such as putting bubbles over the region's myriad existing outdoor pools, haven't caught on, in some cases because of neighborhood resistance.

The situation is dire, according to Mick Nelson, USA Swimming's club facilities development director, who gives an annual seminar on building pools.

"You," Nelson said about the greater Washington swimming community, "are disproportionately in peril."

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