Emery Park is a rough-cut gem

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To the Editor:

I am writing as a Kent resident who has loved swimming in Emery Park Pool for decades. The pool, in its lovely setting, is a gem—a rough-cut one but very special, nonetheless. To live in this beautiful rural town and be able to swim peacefully outdoors in fresh water without driving far is the ultimate luxury to this lifelong swimmer.

After some past times of poor maintenance, aeration that cleaned up the green slime, reduced hours unaccommodating to after-work swims, then the Covid shutdown, I am heartened to learn of the initiative to bring back Emory Park Pool in a forward-looking, sustainable reincarnation.

We are daily made aware of the impacts of climate change. Sustainable solutions need to start at home. Why on earth would we choose to build a concrete, chemically treated, swimming pool— the most resource-intensive, energy-consuming and possibly polluting option—when we have a nature-based, biofiltered option that costs little to operate before us?

Artificial pools consume electricity for filtration and backwashing, a forever cost of operation. They require high water use and non-renewably consume harsh chemicals. I am always mindful that everything comes from somewhere, everything goes somewhere, and it’s all connected. Where does water in an artificial pool come from? At what cost? And where does it go? What aquatic life-harming chemicals are in it when it leaves? There is no “away” anymore.

We read about Nature Deficit Disorder with kids, but it’s not just kids, I hate to say. That starts at home too. People are hardwired to need daily direct interaction with nature. Let’s build a pool that repairs and enhances wildlife habitat rather than destroying it and discharges clean water. The birds, tadpoles, frogs, turtles, occasional harmless snake and native plants that clean the water are a bonus.

Karen Bussolini
South Kent, CT 06785