PLEASANT GROVE — The Pleasant Grove Recreation Center hopes to reopen its pool with upgraded equipment on Thursday, nine days after chlorine exposure sent 26 people to the hospital.
The center is in the process of installing a new control box for the distribution of chlorine, the city said Tuesday. The box will have safeguards built in to prevent a similar incident from happening again in the future.
More than two dozen people, many of them children, were taken to local hospitals on June 4 when excess chlorine was pumped into the water at Pleasant Grove Veterans Memorial Pool, 582 E. 300 South. The water pump was malfunctioning that afternoon, but the control panel that distributes chlorine kept going, causing a chlorine backup in the water pipe. When the pump started working again, the water pushed the extra chlorine into the pool.
As many as 50 people became sick from the incident, which required the services of seven different local EMS agencies. All affected have since been released from the hospital, the city said.
The Utah County Health Department will inspect the pool once the new control box has been installed, then decide whether to let the city reopen the pool on June 13.