Decades of diving fun at Adelaide pool: Now it’s too risky? Council decides to take down local diving board
KIDS have plunged without incident off this diving board at a suburban swimming centre in Adelaide for almost 60 years. But the local council has now deemed it to be “too risky”.
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THE much-loved diving board at a suburban swimming centre has been deemed a safety risk and will be removed — despite no reports of injury in almost 60 years.
Norwood, Payneham & St Peters Council voted on Monday night to shut off the structure and yesterday a chain and a “board closed” sign were strung on its end.
The board at the Norwood Swimming Centre will be taken down.
The move follows the release of a report compiled by the Royal Life Saving Society over winter which found the water under the 1m diving board was not deep enough to meet its “guidelines for safe pool operation”: It is 2.75m deep but needs to be 3.4m.
Council was told there had been no recorded injuries related to the water depth since the pool, on Phillips St, Kensington, opened in 1957.
But still they voted 9:1 to remove the diving board ahead of a second option to employ a lifeguard to monitor pool jumpers.
The lifeguard would have been required to work between midday and 4pm on days above 32 degrees during school holidays and on weekends at an estimated cost of $6500.
Sophia MacRae was the lone councillor opposed to removing the diving board, describing it as a “nanny state” option.
“It has been there for a long, long, long time with no injury,” Cr MacRae said.
“We are overstating our response here, particularly in light of the experience of our residents.”
She said people faced “catastrophic risks” every day when they drove, rode bikes or walked on footpaths.
Cr MacRae asked if the pool could be deepened under the diving board but was told no.
Kensington resident Sara White said she was saddened by the news as her children regularly used the diving board when they were younger.
“It (has) given an enormous amount of pleasure to so many people,” she said.
In pushing for the board’s removal, Sue Whitington told the meeting she was “erring on the side of extreme caution”.
Cr Whitington said she did not want a repeat of a case in Port Hedland, Western Australia, referred to in a staff report where a man was left a paraplegic after diving into the shallow end of a council-owned pool — but in that case, from 2011, the water was less than 1.4m deep.
“It’s all very well to have a lifeguard but that lifeguard doesn’t have control of how people use the diving board,” Cr Whitington said.
“If someone does a deep dive, they could be in deep trouble.”
The diving board features in council promotions for the swimming centre.
In 2002 Cr Paul Wormald, who also voted last night to remove the diving board, used it as a selling point for the Norwood Swimming Centre over Unley’s in a letter to the editor in the Eastern Courier Messenger.
“It has all Unley’s old 1960s public pool character, is open to the fresh air, heated, has only six lanes but, as compensation, it also has big shady trees, barbecues, a great kiosk, late closing all week and, wonder of wonders, a poolside diving board,” Cr Wormald wrote.
A review into the future of the council’s Norwood and Payneham swimming centres is due to be presented in December.
The pool’s 2015/16 summer season opened on Monday.
Marion Council voted last month to close a 25-year-old spa in the Marion Leisure and Fitness Centre, after a joint review with the Royal Lifesaving Society Council.