Houston Needs A Swimming Hole (Dallas, Austin: subsidized, living, costs)

[Inphosphere]

Originally Posted by txdemo

I think it would be cheaper to move everyone that wants to swim in it to Austin and let them swim at Barton Springs.

No, Barton Springs is too small to serve the entire Houston population, and the opportunity is too much for Houston/Galveston to pass up.

[txdemo]

Originally Posted by Inphosphere

No, Barton Springs is too small to serve the entire Houston population, and the opportunity is too much for Houston/Galveston to pass up.

Maybe we could rotate the days alphabetically by last name. Say, A through L can swim one week and M through Z the following week.

Or, maybe rotate by race. Whites could go one week and then all other races the following week.

[cBach]

Originally Posted by txdemo

I think it would be cheaper to move everyone that wants to swim in it to Austin and let them swim at Barton Springs.

The answer is not to have the City of Galveston pay for it, but maybe allow a private company to develop a resort right along the beach and have them pay for it. Perhaps they could put it on the West End for now.

You can see that along the northern coast of France there are plenty of these pools sometimes in the same area. You see there the tides are extreme and during low tide the pool is in the middle of the beach, during high tide it is either overtopped by the ocean or right at it. Since Galveston doesn't have this issue, you would have the "wall" only be around 1 foot higher than the ocean and the pool would be an infinity pool so it would appear that the ocean is actually that blue pool.

During storms, the pool would be overtopped, but you'd just let the filters do their job and it would be clean shortly after a storm.

[crone]

Get a friend who rice farms. Those tanks holding all that aquifer ice cold water are great in August and September.

[mikeyyc]

Originally Posted by shortel

That brown bacteria filled water people call galveston beach? no thanks.

How about a spring fed swimming hole.

Well first, you're gonna need a spring. We're sort of shy of those.

[earthisle]

People swim in the rivers in Austin. Why not Houston?

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by cBach

The answer is not to have the City of Galveston pay for it, but maybe allow a private company to develop a resort right along the beach and have them pay for it. Perhaps they could put it on the West End for now.

You can see that along the northern coast of France there are plenty of these pools sometimes in the same area. You see there the tides are extreme and during low tide the pool is in the middle of the beach, during high tide it is either overtopped by the ocean or right at it. Since Galveston doesn't have this issue, you would have the "wall" only be around 1 foot higher than the ocean and the pool would be an infinity pool so it would appear that the ocean is actually that blue pool.

During storms, the pool would be overtopped, but you'd just let the filters do their job and it would be clean shortly after a storm.

All the examples you posted seem to already have blue water in the adjacent sea.

I'd be all for allowing a private company to build and pay for it.

[cBach]

Originally Posted by oceangaia

All the examples you posted seem to already have blue water in the adjacent sea.

I'd be all for allowing a private company to build and pay for it.

Well Moody Gardens is an exception:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mo...3!4d-94.853182

Those ideas are just greater ideas than Moody Gardens. Basically have a gigantic olympic size or more pool right next to the water.

[cBach]

Here is the Orthlieb pool, 2nd largest in the world. It is in Casablanca Morocco. The water is not perfectly "clear" here in the Atlantic Ocean and you can see tons of pools along the coast here. This is basically what Galveston would need to do. Not cheap, but hey other towns have done it in countries that are a lot poorer than us...

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5971.../data=!3m1!1e3

[cBach]

The wall would need to be solid concrete (with rebar in it for strength) and probably at least 10 feet thick so it could withstand hurricanes.

I think since we're Texas and we go big, why not build the largest pool in the world and build tons of resorts along it on the West End?

Obviously it would need to be a saltwater pool because storms would periodically dump seawater into it so it would need to be able to cope with salinity. But saltwater pools are better anyway. The pool in our neighborhood is saltwater and it's wonderful.