Following the Centralia City Council’s decision in February to permanently close the Pearl Street Pool, city workers began filling it in with dirt to avoid “attractive nuisance liability,” according to Centralia City Manager Rob Hill.
“A vacant pool is the definition of an attractive nuisance, which by law is not a good thing,” Hill said. “So we absolutely cannot continue to have that liability sitting there just waiting for an incident to happen. I think we’re very fortunate we didn’t have one in the last 12 years.”
While Washington state’s premises liability laws say property owners are generally not liable if a person trespasses and is injured on the property, an exception is made for children under the attractive nuisance doctrine. This exception allows child trespassers or their parents and legal guardians to sue property owners for injuries caused by an unsafe object on the property as long as the object “attracted” the child onto the property.
Considering the added risk of drowning when the pool would fill up with rainwater on top of possible injuries sustained by someone falling in, Hill decided it was time to finally fill in the pool with dirt.
“I stood there a couple weeks ago on the edge of that pool and it was half full, and the only thing more dangerous than a full pool is a half full pool, that’s the honest truth. If you fall in, you can’t even grab anything to get out,” Hill said.
Hill added he is still saddened by the pool’s closure, especially with the efforts of the Save The Outdoor Pool (STOP) group, which has been leading efforts to reopen the pool ever since it was closed by the city in 2011 due to maintenance issues and budget constraints.
STOP group members have repeatedly spoken out at Centralia City Council meetings asking the city to reopen the pool.
During its efforts, the STOP group raised more than $100,000 and obtained approval for several grants. The group presented plans for pool restoration in the past, but their efforts weren’t enough to match the ever-increasing cost required to either renovate the existing pool or completely build a new one. The grants were eventually lost as the City of Centralia could not produce the funds to match them in order to keep them.
Hill also said that during the city’s current efforts to fill in the pool they have discovered other issues, such as leaking return lines, which would have added to renovation costs.
“The poor thing, it was just worn out and had timed out,” Hill said of the pool.
As for what will replace the pool in the future, a variety of options are still being debated, including extending the splash pad to a playground, but nothing has been decided yet.
Originally built in the 1950s as a war memorial, the pool was owned and operated by the city until the early 1980s when it was first closed.
In 1984, it was reopened due to the efforts of Friends in Need, a local nonprofit that operated the pool until 2008 when the city resumed ownership until 2011, when it closed the pool again.
The Pearl Street Pool is located on the southwest corner of the intersection at West Hanson Street and North Pearl Street in downtown Centralia.
