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Swimming Hole for Houston?


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Wow, Houston needs this big time! I'm in Austin this weekend and hit Deep Eddy, a man made pool utilizing filtered river water. It's great. And, Barton Springs is amazing!

If Houston had such a place, it should be on White Oak bayou. Take out that crappy small pool and add a huge one, with views of downtown.

Please, Houston, build a freakin' pool for when it's 120 degree like this!

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  • 5 weeks later...

If Houston had such a place, it should be on White Oak bayou. Take out that crappy small pool and add a huge one, with views of downtown.

Please, Houston, build a freakin' pool for when it's 120 degree like this!

While it sounds like a good idea, there's no way I would want to voluntarily swim in bayou water.

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Someone had an idea to do a natural one using the bayou, but it seems impractical. There was a really well thought out reply to the Swamplot article on the idea where someone in the business walked through what all you would have to do to make it work. The short answer was, absent some serious engineering heroics and/or lots of chemicals, it would be silty/muddy, a haven for bad microbes, and generally stanky as all get out.

 

Add to that the security needed to keep it from becoming a bathtub/laudromat for our urban camper popuation, and you're looking at one heck of an expensive swimming pool.

 

The one at the Y is a decent option, though in my time as a member there, it was always very crowded, so maybe there is a market for more. 

 

Here's the link to the response on Swamplot.

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Someone had an idea to do a natural one using the bayou, but it seems impractical. There was a really well thought out reply to the Swamplot article on the idea where someone in the business walked through what all you would have to do to make it work. The short answer was, absent some serious engineering heroics and/or lots of chemicals, it would be silty/muddy, a haven for bad microbes, and generally stanky as all get out.

 

Add to that the security needed to keep it from becoming a bathtub/laudromat for our urban camper popuation, and you're looking at one heck of an expensive swimming pool.

 

The one at the Y is a decent option, though in my time as a member there, it was always very crowded, so maybe there is a market for more. 

 

Here's the link to the response on Swamplot.

 

The problem with the "well thought out reply", as with so much of the content and comments on Swamplot, is the author was so interested in snark and showing how much he knows that he couldn't be bothered to learn anything at all about the proposal.  Nowhere do the swimming hole proponents propose that the swimming hole be stream-fed.  (And, Nate, the "Houston Needs  a Swimming Hole" idea has not proposed to use the bayou.) 

 

http://www.houstonneedsaswimminghole.com/#naturalpool

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The website mentions that the pool "could give the city back an important amenity it lost years ago". Since when Houston have a pool like that?

 

The OffCite article linked on the website has this:

 

"According to Springs of Texas, Volume 1, Harris County once had swimming holes with “pure white sand and clean and limpid water.” Beauchamps Springs, now beneath I-10 or possibly trickling out on its margin, was a popular swimming spot on White Oak Bayou."

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The problem with the "well thought out reply", as with so much of the content and comments on Swamplot, is the author was so interested in snark and showing how much he knows that he couldn't be bothered to learn anything at all about the proposal.  Nowhere do the swimming hole proponents propose that the swimming hole be stream-fed.  (And, Nate, the "Houston Needs  a Swimming Hole" idea has not proposed to use the bayou.) 

 

http://www.houstonneedsaswimminghole.com/#naturalpool

 

Maybe the commenter or I read too much in to something along the way.  I hear "swimming hole" and I think natural body of water, with the Bayou being the only one near DT. Call it a pool with a natural filtration system and you won't have such confusion.

 

Using a natural regeneration approach on an artificial body of water intended for swimming sounds interesting, but there is bound to be a reason it is not attempted more regularly. Sounds like the technology is pretty new, so the Minneapolis version should be a good test case for the US once they have it completed. If at the end of the day they are in the same ballpark economically as a big conventional pool in a city park, sure, except those have disappeared for valid , if annoying, reasons that are not mitigated by enthusiasm generated by a sales pitch that includes a lot of "natural" and "sustainable" window dressing on the same old problems.

 

It will be interesting to see what comes of the crowdsourcing funded proposal. Given the relatively low amount they were trying to raise, it doesn't sound like anyone has much personally invested yet, which makes me skeptical, but it could turn out to be something interesting.

 

Not that a public pool in any city is th slightest bit appealing to me personally.

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