Cool Pool Crisis

Orange groves have been obliterated by freeways. Pacific sunsets are gone, curtained by smog. Up-and-away mobility has fallen prey to traffic congestion. Now what many consider the ultimate blow to California's vaunted good life has been delivered by the state's Public Utilities Commission, which has ruled that after April 1 it will be unlawful to heat newly built swimming pools with natural gas--the only practical way to warm them.

The ruling is comparable to a decree by a Roman emperor that participants in orgies must be fully clothed at all times. Pool builders insist that at least 50% of their prospective customers will not go near the water if it is unheated. Though there are already 225,000 pools in Southern California and 12,000 more are added each year, this seemingly irreversible growth rate may now be stopped, so to speak, cold. Swimming-pool heaters are a use of energy the state cannot afford, argues the commission. Not so, says the industry, which contends that the natural gas used to heat all the pools in Los Angeles accounts for only six-tenths of 1% of the total gas consumption there.

One possible poolhole is a concession by the commission that it will allow pools and small redwood "spas" to be heated "for therapeutic purposes." In the future, heated pools may have to be called natatoriums, while their owners brandish doctors' certificates attesting that they are polio victims. Other Californians may have to join pool pools.

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