WAIPAHU — The Waipahu District Park pool complex has been closed so long — 27 months — that some residents figured it was never going to reopen.

It will, but not for another year or more.

Work on an approximately $2 million repair job is expected to get under way soon and be completed in spring 2009.

Frustrated Waipahu community leaders and park goers say it's about time repairs started, pointing out that the swimming facility was once, and should again be, a key component to keeping area youths active and out of trouble.

Angie Bugarin, executive director of the Waipahu Community Association, said the pool has been down for so long, area residents may have been lulled into a resigned complacency that it would ever get fixed, just like other things in Waipahu.

"Maybe people have lost faith in the system," Bugarin said.

The Waipahu pool is one of three municipal swimming pools that have closed for extended periods in recent years. The KapaoLono Pool in Kaimuki as well as the McCully Pool have both been shut down for more than a year and are under repair.

But this is the second time that extensive work has been needed at the Waipahu site due to the same problem — sinking soil. The entire pool was replaced in 1996 at a cost of approximately $1 million.

This time, the main swimming pool, a kiddie pool, a pump house and a changing facility are all in good shape, city park officials said. What shut the complex down in 2005, however, was a crack in the pool's underground plumbing that was caused by sinking soil above it.

City officials say the problems at the three pools are not related.

SOIL ISSUES

The original Waipahu District Park Pool Complex was built in 1965 on what was once part of a duck pond, according to Waipahu old-timers. City officials blamed the unstable soil when they had to tear down the original pool in 1994. The new pool, put up at the same Paiwa Street location, was completed in about 1996 at a cost of about $1 million, according to a newspaper clipping from that time.

Mindful that the soil issues caused the original pool to crack, the new pool and accompanying structures were built on piles, said Guy Inouye, the city's acting deputy director of design and construction.

"However, due to budget limitations, the adjacent pool deck could not be placed upon piles," Inouye said.

No one, Inouye said, anticipated that the deck itself would begin to sink. The weight of the sinking deck caused the cracking of the pipe connecting the pool to the nearby pumphouse, which led to the leaking of thousands of gallons water daily. Pool officials had no choice but to shut down the pool.

A walk around the pool deck shows obvious signs of the slipping soil. There is a growing gap between the deck floor and the floor of the pump room and shower facility. Instant cement has been placed in some areas in an attempt to slow the retreat. A pipe against the side of the pump house has been pulled apart by the ground separation.

The new work, Inouye said, will include installing piles underneath a reconstructed pool deck. The piping will also be replaced and the pool will be relined with ceramic tile, he said.

The city is about to finalize a contract.

"We do not expect a recurrence of differential settlement between the pool and its adjacent deck," Inouye said.

CAUSING HARDSHIP

Councilman Nestor Garcia, a Waipahu native, said it's no surprise that the ground in that area sinks, since it is the former site of a marshy duck pond.

Garcia last month told the parks department to hold off on signing the contract for the improvements. He said he first wanted to query Waipahu Neighborhood Board members and other area leaders about the need for having the pool at all, noting that the closure had generated few complaints to his staff.

"Our district has many competing needs, not the least of which are badly needed infrastructure improvements that speak more to public safety than to recreational enjoyment," Garcia said in a letter to community leaders dated Jan. 29.

Additionally, he wrote, "Despite engineers' best assurances, the solution offers no guarantee that the same will not happen again."

The query spurred an outpouring of support for the pool from neighborhood board members and other leaders.

Some pointed out that despite the opening last year of a new pool at the reopened Leeward YMCA at the old O'ahu Sugar Mill just up the street, many lower-income families cannot afford the Y's monthly dues, Garcia said.

Pat Pedersen, Waipahu High School principal, wrote that the pool's closure has caused a hardship for the campus swim team, which has no pool of its own and had been using the Paiwa complex for practices.

The team must now travel to Central O'ahu Regional Park several miles away, creating a logistical burden for coaches and team members, Pedersen said.

Waipahu Neighborhood Board Chairman Richard Oshiro said he fears that failure to fix the pool will set a bad precedent that would affect other communities as well.

"It will be so easy to say, 'It's too expensive to fix,' " he said.

Garcia said he's now more comfortable with the $2 million fix.

"It would seem to me that it's just about unanimous that we should go ahead and proceed with the repairs," he said. "People are well aware that this pool was well used back in the day when it was first opened, and they would like to see it reopened."

KEEPS YOUTHS ACTIVE

Parkgoers expressed frustration that the pool had been shut down for so long and relief that it might be redone — by next spring.

Waipahu resident Chris Goode, who coaches a variety of sports at the district park and elsewhere in the neighborhood, said a number of kids used to go to the pool every day. The loss of the pool, Goode said, means "more chances of them getting into unproductive behavior."

Even if one child were diverted from the streets, that would be a good thing, Goode said. "I think that's worth $2 million, don't you? Keep them off the street and learn new things."

Kapolei resident Lehua Soares said three years was too long for the city to get moving on the project, "especially for some place with a lot of children."

Soares, 31, who was sitting in the park parking lot with two of her daughters as they waited for her son to finish boxing practice, said only a month or so ago, she witnessed a group of 11- and 12-year-old boys fighting in the park. It got so bad, she said, she had to call the boxing coach from within the gym to break up the fight.

"Since they have it here, they should have worked on it a long time ago," Soares said. "Just to give the kids something to do, just to keep them busy."

Junior Godinet, a 17-year-old Waipahu High senior, said he is at the district park complex nearly every day playing basketball. Godinet said he would use the pool when it reopens. "There's nothing to do here," he said.

Malala Mamea, 37, said he and his two children would also use the pool when it's reopened, noting that he pays for his children now to use the Leeward YMCA pool up the street. "I was disappointed when they shut it down," said Mamea, who lives about half a mile away.

With his son playing basketball, "if the pool were open, my daughter would be in the pool," Mamea said. "It's just a shame it isn't."

A staff member for Garcia said the councilman lobbied for and obtained funding for the pool improvement in 2006, the budget year immediately after the pool was shut down.

UNRELATED PROBLEMS

Inouye confirmed that the Waipahu pool complex is the third to undergo a closure and extended shutdown in recent years.

But the specific problems encountered at each of the pools are distinct and not related to any particular defect or problem, Inouye said.

"I don't think there's any pattern," he said. "Aging facilities are the common denominator."

While Waipahu's issue was differential ground settlement, it was the structure of the pool and filtration system at McCully that needed to be shored up, he said. At KapaoLono, restrooms and tiling needed to be done but there were no structural problems, he said.

Garcia said the decision to not put pilings beneath the pool deck at Waipahu came before he was elected and that he was not interested in tracing what happened.

"Could've, would've, should've," Garcia said. "Now that we have 20-20 vision, yeah, maybe we should have put pilings under the deck. But they made a decision at that time, which they felt was best to get this resource available to the community. They made those decisions, now we're trying to play catch-up."

Councilman Charles Djou, who represents the area that includes KapaoLono Pool and has been critical of the handling of that situation, said the city needs to do a better job taking care of its facilities.

Of the Waipahu complex, he said, "I'm not an engineer, but it sounds like to me better planning could have been done with the construction of this facility."

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.