To the casual or untrained eye, two Bridgeport firemen with monitoring devices lowering a man into an underground area near the city’s swimming pool may seem to be concerning. For those gathered late last week, everything was under control and they were there to make sure things remained under control.

 

“We had a man underground making a repair and you have to adhere to the city’s confined space policy,” said Bridgeport Parks and Recreation Director Deputy Director Joe Shuttleworth. “Our friends at the Fire Department came over to gauge the atmosphere to make sure the employee (Jack Fenton) that we had down there is safe. He’s got the gauges monitoring his surrounding and he’s in a safety harness in the event any other issue may arise.”

 

The reason Fenton was being watched for any issues was because of an issue Parks and Recreation dealt with for large portions of 2014. Shuttleworth said that one of the two pumps that feed 1200 gallons of water per minute to the city’s highly popular “sprayground” feature utilized by kids wasn’t working properly.

 

A problem that couldn’t be immediately determined was causing the water from one of the pumps to not operate properly. In order to make sure the sprayground wasn’t out of working order, each day a staff member from Parks and Recreation would manually go down to the pool and prime the pump to get it started.

 

“Once it started, everything worked fine,” said Shuttleworth. “After it sat overnight, then the problem would come back so we made it a priority to try and determine where the problem was this year and fix it.”

 

Like many problems involving pipes and gauges, Shuttleworth said they had to go through a process of elimination to determine what was leading to the problem. Last week, the problem was found underground.

 

“It was a bad gasket between two flanges. Once it was found it was relatively a simple fix,” said Shuttleworth. “It wasn’t a problem to come down and manually do things, but it was an inconvenience. With it working properly, the lifeguards can come in and turn it on and everything should be back to normal.”

 

What that means is that those utilizing City Pool when it opens shouldn’t know there was ever a problem. In fact, Shuttleworth said no one noticed the issue last year due to the manual fix every morning.

 

“Everything should be in working order when the pool season gets underway this weekend,” said Shuttleworth.

 

Shuttleworth said the pool will be open for the first time Saturday. The gates open at noon, he said.

 

Editor's Note: Photo of Jack Fenton looking to make repairs last week.