Hold onto your butts.
New York City’s public pools turned into toilets at a surprisingly high rate last summer, as the parks department was forced to close its swimming holes 203 times to clean up a visitor’s poop.
Data obtained by Gothamist through a freedom of information request reveals the sheer scale of the defecation in the city’s cherished bathing areas. The incidents limited access to swimming across the city, which has already been strained for years by an ongoing lifeguard shortage.
Now, as pools open for the summer on Friday, experts warn New Yorkers should be extra mindful to control their bowels while at a pool to avoid a catastrophe.
“ When these incidents happen, it puts an enormous amount of pressure on the operator,” said Kaitlin Krause, founder of the nonprofit Rising Tide Effect, which advocates for water safety.
Records show 44 of the city’s 52 public pools had to close at least once last summer due to dookie. New Yorkers lost a combined 600 hours of swimming time as a result of the incidents, according to the data. On a single day in August, 12 pools were browned out.
The parks department defines a situation where a solid, or “formed,” stool is released into the water as a “level 1” incident. More serious “level 2” alerts are reserved for liquid feces.
Pools were closed more often for level 1 cleanups, with 184 such incidents reported. There were 19 incidents of liquid stools released into pools, which required significantly longer closures.
A parks department spokesperson said it’s against the rules to urinate or defecate in city-owned pools, and noted babies and toddlers are required to wear swim diapers.
Lyons Pool on Staten Island had its waters soiled most frequently last summer, with people evacuating their bowels there on 15 separate occasions.
The longest closure was at Astoria Pool the day after it opened last June. The pool had returned after two years of construction and Mayor Eric Adams celebrated its reopening. But records show the newly restored Olympic-sized pool quickly had to shut down for 48 hours after it was fouled by a level 2 incident.
Parks officials said protocols differ depending on the consistency of the excrement. For solid poop, all swimmers are kicked out, and a net is used to scoop the material out of the water. Workers then add chlorine to the mix for at least 25 minutes before reopening the pool.
Workers follow the same procedure for a liquid poop incident, but the chlorine level is jacked up even higher and the pool becomes a no-go zone for 25 hours.
“There’s sanitary codes and procedures you have to follow, and then you also have all the bathers who want to continue to swim,” Krause said.
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