Alaska News

Bethel's first pool a testament to perseverance, engineering and state money

BETHEL -- On the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where children on a warm summer day play-swim in chilly tundra lakes and at river edges, where drowning rates are high and water is everywhere, the first swimming pool is expected to provide substance as well as a place to splash.

The city of Bethel's new pool and fitness center is set to open in early November after decades of bake sales -- and a $23 million state appropriation in 2012. The last barge of the year is heading to Bethel with furnishings and workout equipment. The massive above-ground concrete structure is specially designed for tundra and supported with nearly 200 thermal piles to expel hot air and keep the permafrost frozen.

The whole project, counting city money for the design and grants from other organizations, cost more than $25 million.

Now city leaders are considering a fundamental question: How can they ensure the hard-fought pool, costly to build and run, will be sustainable over the long haul?

For that, they say, the money is already in the bank.

30 years of trying

The sign out front says Yukon-Kuskokwim Regional Aquatic Health & Safety Center, but most everyone just calls it "the pool."

The biggest wind turbine in town towers over it, marking the spot and already generating power.

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Bev Hoffman, the persistent voice behind the project and part of one of Bethel's leading families, has stuffed a big canvas tote bag with 30 years worth of pool-related newspaper clippings, children's essays, architectural plans and funding requests.

Life in Bethel has always centered on the Kuskokwim River, the source of essential salmon and a main transportation route. The growing city, a hub for 56 villages, stretches along six miles of riverfront and has 21 miles of shoreline when you count islands and bank formations.

Like just about everyone, Hoffman grew up boating but couldn't swim. A child drowned nearby in a pit filled with water. Others were lost to the river, to boating accidents, to lakes. "I was deathly afraid of the water," she says.

At 18, Hoffman landed at a South Florida junior college and signed up for a beginning swim class and was surprised she was the only student who didn't already know how. She stuck with it and when she was caught in an ocean riptide, she didn't panic.

Back in her hometown as a young adult, Hoffman started to push for a community pool. She sat on the parks and recreation committee, which in the early 1980s named a pool its No. 1 priority.

Supporters geared up only to be deflated when the pool lost out to more pressing needs. Voters turned down a pool bond. The community focused on a multimillion-dollar seawall essential for combating erosion.

Some called the pool "a ridiculous idea," Hoffman said. "Fluff."

"I never saw it like that," Hoffman said. Maybe the pool would help address the region's deep dysfunction, drinking and despair, violence and suicides. "A place to go, a place to recreate together, to be healthy together."

The pool, she said, "meant saving lives."

Bakes sales and taxes

A rash of 17 drownings in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region in 1990 led activists to push anew. Public broadcasting station KYUK, where Hoffman's husband, John McDonald, was general manager, produced a television program that examined the deaths. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. found that drinking contributed to about half of them.

A group made up mainly of moms formed the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Lifesavers to raise money and show community support. Every year the Lifesavers organized a Christmas cookie extravaganza -- an enormous bake sale. A Harlem Globetrotters spinoff team put on a show. Girl Scouts collected pennies for the pool.

"And people kept drowning," Hoffman said.

Between 2000 and 2006, the Yukon-Kuskokwim region's rate of drowning was five times that for Alaska as a whole, the equivalent of 47 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to nine deaths per 100,000 for the state, according to statistics collected by Hoffman.

Bethel-area drownings dropped by half over the next five years, in part because of the "Kids Don't Float" life jacket program. Still, drowning rates remain high in Alaska, said Deborah Hull-Jilly, health program manager with the state health department's division of epidemiology.

Finally in 2007, things began to turn. Bethel voters agreed to raise the city sales tax for two years by 1 cent on the dollar, to 6 percent overall, for a pool and recreation center. With no property tax here, the sales tax is the main source of local government funding for fire and police, streets and parks, generating about $7 million this year.

Two years later, when the tax was scheduled to decrease by half a penny on the dollar, voters agreed to keep the higher rate. Now 0.5 percent of the city's sale tax is going into a pool fund, generating about $600,000 a year with $4.3 million in hand, said Hansel Mathlaw, city finance director.

"The plan all along was for something sustainable," said Bethel vice mayor Rick Robb, the city council's representative on a nonprofit pool advisory board, Kuimarvik, Yup'ik for "a place to swim."

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But there was still no pool and no money to build one. The city, with Hoffman elected to the council in 2008, donated a 10-acre site and stockpiled gravel.

A 2011 feasibility study by the McDowell Group found that with the designated sales tax money, the project would work economically. The facility is expected to cost about $1 million a year to run, though the budget is still being worked out, Hoffman said.

In 2012, Bethel made its big push to the Legislature. The city submitted detailed studies as well as surveys that found a high level of support for the pool in Bethel, with slightly less support in nearly villages. Democratic Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman -- Bev's first cousin -- was on the Senate Finance Committee.

That year the Legislature quietly approved $23 million.

On the permafrost

Now Bethel's pool is nearly complete.

It has six lanes 25 yards long, high school competition size. There's a twisting water slide, a kiddie pool section and a separate hot tub that the city says can accommodate at least 17 people. The main pool is about 3 feet to 7 feet deep, which will allow diving from the side but no diving board. A deeper pool would have been complex to engineer on the permafrost and expensive to heat.

There will be lap swims and classes and maybe a swim team. Adults may learn to swim, too. Pool consultant Paul Graves said he envisions it as a safe place for hunters and fishermen to learn an essential life skill.

It may be the first above-ground concrete pool in Alaska, said principal architect David Moore of Anchorage-based Architects Alaska. Typically, above-ground pools are stainless steel, but concrete is considered a more compatible pool material, he said. The Bethel pool is his firm's 15th in Alaska, with projects from Ketchikan to Nikiski to Unalaska.

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The bottom of the building is elevated a few feet to allow critical air circulation underneath, which added an extra challenge to the design and construction.

"It's the thawing of the permafrost we are concerned about," Moore said. "You don't want to take this warm body of water and sink it into the ground because the permafrost would melt, and then the whole thing would just sink."

The thermal piles are equipped with radiators designed to expel heat, which will rise and push cold air down to keep the permafrost frozen, said David Gage, project manager with UNIT Co., which built the facility for prime contractor Bethel Native Corp.'s construction arm. The piles are extra long, extending about 35 feet into the earth to support the massive structure, Moore said. The water in the pool alone weighs more than 1 million pounds.

Architects, construction managers and mechanical and electrical engineers have been looking for potential problems. The water slide leaked a little. That's an easy fix, Graves said. Tests found the sprinkler system isn't getting the water flow needed, and a team is working on a solution, Moore said. When the pool was initially filled, there were pinhole leaks and cracks, as is typical. All were repaired before plaster and tile were installed, he said. Bethel's city water is brownish but turned clear with chlorine treatment.

Big windows let in light. Some in the community were worried people outside could peek in to see bathing suit-clad swimmers, but the windows are high. There are huge fans and vents to keep clean air circulating.

The facility includes a weight room and fitness rooms. There will be treadmills and spinning bikes, weight machines and space for yoga and other classes. A menu for the concession area is still being worked out -- some want healthy choices -- but likely will include pizza, said Raunicka Ray, the facility manager.

She works for an Atlanta-area company, USA Pools, which the city hired to run the facility for a management fee of $11,700 a month with costs for most utilities and staff on top of that, according to a draft copy of the contract. Besides Ray, the company has hired a full-time program director from Denver.

Ray came to Bethel with years of experience in pool and health club administration. Her last position was in Columbus, Georgia, running a 20-lane Olympic-size pool. She doesn't go anywhere in Bethel without a jacket.

The company is announcing job opportunities for fitness instructors, swim teachers, lifeguards, customer service representatives and janitors on its YK Fitness Center Facebook page. Ray said she's finding potential lifeguards right in Bethel despite the lack of a pool until now. One went to Anchorage to become certified. USA Pools provides training too, Ray said.

"There are people out there who are really excited about this pool," Ray said.

She's planning pool movie nights. Teachers are contacting her about opportunities. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. has booked a party. Its diabetes prevention program donated $196,000 for fitness equipment there, and the Rasmuson Foundation gave $740,000 for furnishings and equipment, according to the city's pool project manager, Project Development Associates.

Cookies for swim lessons

The Lifesavers fund from all those cookie sales tops $200,000. Hoffman said she hopes the money will subsidize swimming lessons and opportunities for those who can't afford them. Maybe every Bethel fourth-grader could learn to swim.

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Ray says the company wants long hours, 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays, shorter on weekends. The fitness center will offer monthly and annual memberships as well as daily swimming passes, which Ray expects will cost about $8 for an adult.

USA Pools still is preparing a detailed budget and operations plan for the city council.

To keep costs down, pool hours may have to be shortened, said John Sargent, Bethel's grant manager. That's what officials did in the small Interior city of Galena.

The pool will be operated for efficiency, Ray said. Every night, workers will cover the pool with an insulated blanket to keep the heat in and prevent the water from evaporating.

The project includes a $1.1 million wind turbine that in peak wind periods will be able to generate 40 percent of the facility's energy needs, Moore said.

The community fundraising will continue, Hoffman said. A gym may come next.

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She spent her whole adult life pushing for a basic pool to teach people to swim. She was overwhelmed to tears when she walked through the state-of-the-art facility now about to open.

Millions are spent on the police department and state troopers, on jails and treatment centers, for when people come unraveled. Now Bethel is investing in something healthy from the start.

"It's one of the best things that have happened," Hoffman said. "Because this is what people of this region deserve."

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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