Jun. 14—Judith Gabriel has been swimming laps at city pools several times a week for more than 20 years. For the past few weeks, she thought the lap pool at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center was starting to get busy because summer has started.

“Then I realized the other pools were closed,” she said.

The Fort Marcy and Salvador Perez pools, along with Bicentennial Pool — the city’s only outdoor swimming facility, which was rebuilt in recent years — are currently closed for maintenance and repairs.

This leaves only the Chavez Center’s aquatic facility available to swimmers as temperatures have soared into the 90s in recent weeks.

City officials say the pools at Salvador Perez and Fort Marcy could reopen as early as Monday, while Bicentennial Pool will not be open until at least early July.

Facilities Division Director Sam Burnett said it was never the city’s intention to close three of its four pools at the start of summer.

“It feels like the perfect storm,” he said.

The city had scheduled boiler upgrades at Fort Marcy and Salvador Perez in advance of the summer swimming season, which Recreation Division Director Brian Stinett said was “long-scheduled maintenance.”

Work was initially intended to be staggered, with both pools opening up in early June, but took longer than anticipated at Salvador Perez, resulting in both pools being closed at the same time.

Meanwhile, a leak was discovered at Bicentennial Pool, and identifying its location was a lengthy process involving a 48- to 72-hour test of each part of the pool system.

“We tested everything we could possibly think of,” Burnett said.

Stinett said employees finally discovered the leak was in the sealant line between the stainless steel gutters and the plaster concrete.

“There’s a line that runs 360 degrees around that pool, and the caulk line is what failed,” he said.

Bicentennial Pool was closed for the 2021 season for significant renovations — essentially a dismantling of the old pool, built in the 1970s, and reconstruction, as well as renovation of the tot pool. Stinett said it’s not clear what led to the leak just three years after the project.

Outdoor pools receive significantly more wear and tear than indoor pools, he said, and heating and cooling can cause expansion and contraction that might have caused the caulk to fail.

Burnett said the contractor that rebuilt Bicentennial Pool in 2021, Davenport Contruction Management, accepted the issue as under warranty even though it was on the cusp and is managing the repairs. Once the company begins the repair work, its crews should be able to determine what caused the problem.

Contractors are scheduled to start June 19 and work for 12 days, after which the pool has to be inspected before it can open. An opening date is tentatively scheduled for July 6, Stinett said.

Burnett said work was wrapping up at both Fort Marcy and Salvador Perez and — “fingers crossed” — both will be back open June 17.

In the meantime, Santa Fe swimmers are frustrated.

The pool at Santa Fe Community College is one of just a few other affordable options in town, with memberships at private clubs either sold out for the summer or priced out of reach for many families.

Kara Ashbaugh, a mother of five grown children who works as a nanny, said she had trouble affording to go to the pool when her children were young and is now limited by the closures.

“It’s been a challenge,” she said.

Ashbaugh worries about what the lack of swimming options will mean for the city’s kids.

“If they’re not in the water, and they’re not getting used to it and having fun, they’re not gonna learn to swim well, and that’s a danger,” she said. “If our kids don’t have access to a place to learn to swim, then we’re running a risk taking them anywhere. Just because we live in New Mexico doesn’t mean that there’s not water to drown in.”

Gabriel, the lap swimmer, said so far she hasn’t had a problem getting a lane at the Chavez Center, but she’s unhappy on behalf of Santa Fe’s young people that the city’s only outdoor pool is closed.

“Families need a place to go,” she said.

Private swim instructor Nate Romero, who has 22 years of lifeguard experience, said he doesn’t understand how the city could have allowed the three closures to happen at once.

“Working around pools for so many years, I completely do not understand how they decide and do these major maintenance things right before summer because anything can go wrong,” Romero said. “I worked in Los Alamos for many, many years, and we always did our maintenance things at the end of summertime. It was planned that way so that you don’t ruin the summer for the community.”

The city of Santa Fe, also faced with an ongoing lifeguard shortage that for years has affected hours at pools, allows private instructors to teach swim courses at its pools, Romero said. However, he added, the closures have made it harder for him to conduct his business, as everyone in the city is jockeying for space at one pool.

Stinett said the Chavez Center is now operating at full capacity, and the division has enough lifeguards to open a second pool while maintaining all or most of the programs at the Chavez Center.

But even with some newly hired lifeguards coming on board later this month, the division will be short about 20% of its total positions.

“With what we currently anticipate, we might be able to get three of the four pools operational with some limited hours on one of them,” Stinett said.

At full capacity, it takes 18 lifeguards per day to staff the Chavez Center, eight per day at both Salvador Perez and Fort Marcy and six at Bicentennial Pool. Based on standards from the Red Cross, pool capacity is determined by a ratio of 25 swimmers per lifeguard.

“It’s all about safety,” Stinett said, noting more swimmers per guard could lead to dangerous swimming conditions and open the city up to liability. “We follow those requirements from our certifier to a T.”

New Mexican staff writer Kylie Garcia contributed to this report.