School, park districts disagree on who should fund pool fix

This version corrects an earlier version that said the park district had already spent $14,000 on engineering expenses related to the project. The school district has paid that amount for those expenses.

The Vashon Pool is slated to open next month, but the islands school and park districts are disagreeing about who is financially responsible to remedy the drainage problem there, a situation that could lead to litigation and the pool not opening this season.

We want the pool to open, no question, said school board member Laura Wishik after a special board meeting Monday. But it has to be in a way that does not bind the school district to further costs at the pool.

The school district owns the pool, but the Vashon Park District operates it. This arrangement began four years ago, when King County ceased running the pool as a cost-saving move, and the park district took it on.

In previous years, the pools water drained to the school districts septic system. However, the construction of the new high school changed that, and officials at both districts learned earlier this spring that the pools drainage had been unknowingly cut off last fall during the building process.

Since the discovery of the problem, the school districts Capital Projects Manager Eric Gill has been working with a variety of regulatory agencies to come up with a solution.

Last week, the Department of Ecology (DOE) approved a plan: a pipe that would go between the pool area and an existing drainage pond to the west of the facility. But such a fix is unusual, and the DOE will require considerable monitoring and testing to ensure no effluent travels as far as the wetlands on the districts property near Vashon Youth & Family Services, school district Superintendent Michael Soltman said.

The park district will need to be extremely careful and cooperative in managing the pool to the conditions of this solution, he added.

If discharging the water is managed well, the solution will work, he said, but if potentially harmful waste is detected in the wetlands, additional measures will be needed for the pool to continue to operate. Those measures, Soltman said, include a surge tank, which would meter out the pools waste water, and if problems persist, the installation of an infiltration trench. The engineering firm working with school district estimates those two measures would cost as much as $57,000.

In Mondays school board meeting to discuss the potential solution, the board authorized Soltman to negotiate with the park district to cover 50 percent of the cost of the proposed fix, estimated to be no more than $40,000. This figure includes $14,000 the school district has already spent on engineering expenses related to the project. The school board also laid out several conditions the park district must meet. It will require that the park district pay for any measures that might be needed beyond the proposed solution, that the park district be financially responsible for all the expenses related to hauling waste water from the pool a process it has been relied on to ready this pool this spring and that it adhere to DOEs conditions for the drainage fix and their associated costs. These requirements would be a included in an addendum to the pool lease the park district has with the school district before any construction would begin, school board members said.

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School, park districts disagree on who should fund pool fix