BUCKLAND — Last year’s anonymous $500,000 donation for a new swimming pool has helped jump-start efforts to raise at least a million dollars to build it. Now the town is seeking a $400,000 state recreation grant that could make it possible for the town to have a new swimming pool by 2020.
Town Administrator Andrea Llamas spent her Fourth of July working on an application for a PARC grant from the state, with the town to use the donation for its matching share of funds. PARC stands for “Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities,” and a $32,000 PARC grant the town received this year made it possible for the Buckland Recreations Committee to build the town’s first playground, at the Buckland Recreation Center on Route 112.
If Buckland receives the $400,000 pool grant, the town will be notified in December. However, the money wouldn’t be given out until the fiscal year that starts in July 2019, so engineering, design and other preparation work wouldn’t start until the all the money was in hand. Llamas said the actual construction would likely take place during the construction season in 2020.
But to qualify for the grant, the town must show it already has the balance of the money needed to complete the project. Because more than $900,000 is needed, voters may be asked to approve about $250,000 in additional funds at a special town meeting this fall, to ensure there is enough to build the pool.
“For a small town this size, getting the pool is a big accomplishment,” said Llamas. She said the old swimming pool, which opened in 1963, “was lovingly attended to for as many years as possible” before it was closed after the 2016 season.
In 2016, the town applied for and failed to get a $1.8 million MassWorks grant to replace the pool. At the time of that application, more than 100 residents and nonresidents sent letters of support for the grant, which would have been used to build a three-lane lap pool, with an L-shaped, “zero-entry” area where young children and senior citizens could gradually wade into a shallow area.
The old pool, which was too close to Clesson Brook, has been removed. A new pool, the access road and septic system for it, will be moved further from the brook. In 2015, according to the MassWorks grant application, almost 5,000 people from several towns used the pool — not including senior swim participants or those who came for swimming lessons. The pool was also used every summer since 1995 for the six-week Mohawk Summer Camp, serving families throughout nine towns in the Mohawk Trail Regional School system. The camp usually brought in 50 to 60 children a day, according to the Recreation Committee.
By the end of that season, the old pool leaked so badly that between 1,800 to 2,000 gallons of water were lost overnight, if it wasn’t refilled by hoses. There were concerns about water use exceeding its well permit and leakage affecting the balance of pool chemicals in the water.