A saltwater saga is subsiding, with new health and safety measures in place and a compromise reached between the council and volunteers who clean Motueka’s beloved saltwater baths.
The long-standing systems were in flux after a Nelmac worker slipped in January and suffered a head injury while cleaning the swimming pool.
Volunteer Nigel Duff has been cleaning the baths for 35 years, and he explains that during the busy summer months, the pool is cleaned every 12 days, to work in with the tides.
The volunteers work alongside a Nelmac contractor during the majority of the cleans, which are necessary to remove algae from the bottom of the pool that is worsened by the summer heat.
After the incident in January, the Tasman District Council told the volunteers to pause their work on the pool while the procedures were reviewed, and a few “quite hot words” were exchanged, Nigel says.
“A lot of [the volunteers] have been doing this for 35 years and are pretty experienced.” There have also never been any pool-related injuries within the volunteer group, Nigel says.
He reports that in the initial conversations, the contractors wanted the cleaning to be “100 per cent Nelmac”, and rather than contend with liability and red tape, the volunteers talked about walking away and leaving them to it. Losing their connection and the local autonomy was deemed too much of a risk, however, particularly as the pool has been on the verge of closure several times in the past, only to be resurrected and refurbished by determined volunteers.
“The council, with all their bureaucracy and that, they don’t realize there’s a lot of thought and a lot of work goes into this pool that they don’t see.”
The parties were working their way through the “grey area where we’re trying to decide who’s accountable for what”. For Nigel and his fellow volunteers, this looks like going forward with high visibility clothing, hard hats and long boots, as well as paperwork that has to be “signed in triplicate”, he says with a laugh.
TDC’s reserves and facilities manager Grant Reburn says that following the injury, the council and Nelmac reviewed the site’s health and safety protocols and now require volunteers, as well as paid staff, to use an increased level of personal protective equipment.
“These community volunteers have put thousands of hours into their cleaning efforts at the baths over the decades, and we’re extremely grateful to those people who have taken time from their busy personal lives to assist cleaning this historic community asset - without whom the asset would not be the treasure it is.”
He says that due to the “very real risk”, these steps must now be taken to ensure “the best safety practices are in place so our volunteers can continue in their vital roles”.
Nelmac’s chief executive Lindsay Coll was contacted about the injured employee and says that although he cannot discuss their condition in detail for privacy reasons, they are improving.
