By Adam Eisenbarth
Despite poor weather this spring, the Rimbey swimming pool reconstruction project is underway.
Hazardous materials and geotechnical investigations are complete and the town is expecting results back within the week.
“Assuming everything is OK we can start on the demolition,” said CAO Tony Goode, who is satisfied with the project’s start.
“The rain doesn’t help anything but there’s a time delay of a week to 10 days on this geotech and hazmat to get the results back. They have to send the results away to get analyzed to make sure that we don’t have bad stuff in the ground and all that sort of thing.”
The investigations were conducted May 25 and 26.
An agreement with the Best Western Rimstone Resort will allow public access to their hotel pool this summer.
“We really appreciate what (owner Stan Cummings) has done. We’ve put a little joint agreement in place.”
In addition, there will be a bus service to Lacombe for swimming lessons. The service is free and participants just have to pay for their lessons in Lacombe.
The town is expecting this summer to be the only one without the pool.
“I don’t think (the project) will go over to next summer. Once they get the building up and the pool poured … it’ll just be a matter of finishing off the inside, putting the equipment in, that sort of thing.”
Whether the project stays on track for its October completion depends on the weather.
“Once they do the demolition and expose the ground, if we have weather like we’ve had this past week, you can’t pour concrete when the ground is wet so it has to dry out, otherwise you’re going to get frost heaving.”
The summer without an outdoor pool should come with a nice payoff for the town next year, with significant upgrades.
A spray park, waterslide and hot tub are all part of the project.
“It will be more geared for families than just people that want to go out and swim lengths and we’re going to try and get the spray park portion open longer because it’s just some play equipment in there with water cannons and little spray things like that.”
There was some hope for an indoor pool but Goode says at this time it’s just not an option.
“It’s not cost-effective at this point. We just don’t have the population to be running a year-round swimming pool.”
That doesn’t mean the option won’t be there in the future however.
“The plan is to put the proper footings in place so that somewhere down the road it could be enclosed.”
There is no specific timeline for when that will be but Goode is pleased with the upgrades that are planned.
“It’ll be a significant upgrade to what’s there.”