Wednesday, March 11, 2009 | 4:17 p.m.
Residents and managers of Southern Nevada apartment and condominium complexes are understandably upset over a bureaucratic foul-up that's threatening to delay the opening of pools for the swimming season.
The problem started, as so many problems do, with a well-intentioned program that was poorly executed.
The federal Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act requires swimming pools and hot tubs owned by homeowners associations, apartment complexes and condominiums to be equipped with a new, safer, style of suction drain. The law is named after the 7-year-old granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker, a girl who died in 2002 when she was pinned to the bottom of a hot tub by a suction drain.
The problem is, after local pool owners complied with the law by installing the new drains, they couldn't immediately reopen their pools and hot tubs because the Southern Nevada Health District could not keep up with the flood of requests for required inspections that came in this winter.
The Health District says it's now working out a system that it hopes will clear up the backlog.
We hope the system, which involves self-inspections and documentation by pool contractors and owners, is in place soon.
Apartment and HOA managers — who played by the rules and installed the drains at considerable expense — deserve this break.
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