Pool Closed Until Further Notice

"Posted by Walter Olson

Tomorrow is a deadline that looms large for worried pool operators at hotels and public recreation facilities across the country, as USA Today reports:

Hoteliers must have pool lifts to provide disabled people equal access to pools and whirlpools, or at least have a plan in place to acquire a lift. If they don’t, they face possible civil penalties of as much as $55,000.

As Conn Carroll at the Washington Examiner explains, the mandate has taken an even more irrational form than might have been expected. Because the elevator lifts are space-consuming, unsightly, potential hazards to curious children, and unlikely to be used very often, many pool operators assumed it would be enough to purchase a portable lift that could be wheeled over to poolside on user request and stored when not in use. No such luck: the Obama administration has announced that the lifts must not only be of permanent construction, but must apply to each separate “water feature”, so that a pool with adjoining spa would need two of them. “Each lift costs between $3,000 and $10,000 and installation can add $5,000 to $10,000 to the total.” Many budget hostelries are expected to simply shutter their pools until further notice rather than take the risk that entrepreneurial fast-buck artists will begin filing complaints against them for cash settlements, as in California’s notorious ADA filing mills."..........

More unintended consequences? Or is the Obama administration flipping a meaty bone to the trial lawyers who gave him a lot of campaign donations?

This is how big govment creates jobs - Burden people with as many maintenance and liability issues as you can.

Just one more unnecessary regulation- add it to the list of thousands of others.

I say free the pools from excessive government intervention!

The new regulations were put into place Sept. 15, 2010, and go into effect today.

Ah, the ADA -- draining taxpayers and businesses dry via Trial Lawyers from the moment it stepped into view, in 1990. Thank you kindly, President George HW Bush.

Cheese Slut wrote: The new regulations were put into place Sept. 15, 2010, and go into effect today.

The 300,000 public pool have had enough time to comply with this regulation. Those that have not installed these devices by this point deserve the million dollar lawsuits that we be coming. You break the law, you fail to follow the regulations, then you pay the price. I have no sympathy for them.

Enforcement will be by litigation. If I had a disability & I was making a reservation at a hotel, I think I would ask about ADA amenities prior to booking.

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OK, all you disabled people.... out of the pool!

Yes, since they are a "drain on society", we should march them off to camps and quietly exterminate them.

WWCCD? (What Would a Compassionate Conservative Do?)