Home to the
Plains Piranhas Swim Team, this is a six lane, 25 metre outdoor pool. It was built, mostly through charitable donations, over 30 years ago, in the early 1980s, after three local boys drowned while swimming in the Clark Fork River. In 2011 the pool faced a crisis when facing closure due to lack of funds for a new sand filter. After failing to win funds in the "We Hear You America" contest sponsored by Readers Digest, they managed to raise over $70,000 (must have been some fancy sand filter) through private and commercial donations and the pool remained open, even receiving a new coat of paint that year.
On May 13, 2011 KAJ-TV of Kalispell, MT published an online article on the story of the pool's plight, which is reproduced below.
The pool is the centrepiece of the E.L. Johnson Pool Park on Oak Street, occupying a full city block between Willis and Boyer Streets. Other facilities include tennis courts, skateboard park, playground, wading pool and a basketball court.
Plains residents rally around pool,
hoping for help from contest
May 13, 2011 9:16 PM by Dennis Bragg (KPAX/KAJ Media Center)
PLAINS - The people of Plains are in the thick of competition for a Reader's Digest contest that could help keep the town's pool from closing and they're hoping their Western Montana neighbors will pitch in this weekend to help out.
Plains built the E.L. Johnson Memorial Pool over 30-years ago after three boys drowned in one year while swimming in the Clark Fork River. Maintaining the pool has always been expensive and the town has recently run into the expense of replacing an expensive sand filter so the pool can open this summer.
That's where Reader's Digest comes in. Plains is among 400 communities in the running for the magazine's "We Hear You America" contest, which gives local towns a shot at winning thousands of dollars in prize money for local projects.
Over the past few weeks, online voting has pushed Plains to near the top of the list, now setting at #13 with over 236,000 total "cheers".
That's still a long ways behind the top three communities who have millions of votes. But with some extra effort over the weekend, Plains could make it into the Top 10 and win a $10,000 prize.
Celeste Lindsey of the Committee for Safe Swimming tells Montana's News Station that would be a big help in completing the fund drive, which has already benefited from donation jars, chocolate truffle sales and other volunteer efforts.
Lindsey says the committee is always "worried about the next thing to break", and the prize money would help the group have some contingency dollars available for emergency repairs.
She tells Montana's News Station without the funding the pool would have to close, and it's likely Plains couldn't afford to build an entirely new pool to meet present day rules and regulations.
The committee is hoping people all over Western Montana will jump on line to give Plains "cheers" this weekend at www.wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com. The voting ends Monday.
There's additional information available on the Plains Committee for Safe Swimming's Facebook page.
Plains is also hosting a dinner and auction Saturday evening at the Sanders County Fairgrounds to help raise additional funds.
From KAJ18
