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Law to Waive Hotel Lifeguard Requirements Rejected; About 60 Hotels in the Annapolis, Maryland
 Area Must Close Swimming Pools If No Lifeguard on Duty

By Phillip McGowan, The Baltimore SunMcClatchy-Tribune Regional News

Jan. 9--The Anne Arundel County Council has rejected a bill to waive requirements that lifeguards be posted at small pools at hotels, after the testimony of a man whose 5-year-old son drowned at Crofton Country Club.

Thomas Freed, who with his wife started a foundation to strengthen safety standards for pools after the June 2006 death of Connor Freed, said Monday night that the council should not consider easing pool restrictions.

The bill by Councilman Edward R. Reilly called for waiving the requirement for hotel operators to place a lifeguard at most pools with an area of less than 2,500 square feet.

Shortly afterward, the council voted 6-1 against an amendment to refine the several provisions and the bill.

Representatives of county hotels lobbied for the measure as a way to reduce the financial burden of providing lifeguards. About 60 hotels would have been affected by the measure, and the cumulative savings could have approached $3 million.

Anne Arundel County is one of four jurisdictions in the state where regulations regarding swimming pools exceed the state standard, said county Health Officer Frances B. Phillips. That would have remained the case under the amended bill, which would have explicitly stated that all community pools must have lifeguards and exempted hotel pools less than 5 feet deep.

Council members said they were inclined to maintain the restrictions, to the dismay of hotel operators, who must close their pools when they can't find lifeguards.

"My concern comes from the basic question of why we shouldn't have lifeguards at these pools," said Councilman Daryl D. Jones, a Severn Democrat whose district in North County includes numerous of hotels.

The county averages seven to eight drownings a year, including two or three suicides, Phillips said.

A 16-year-old lifeguard who had been hired three weeks earlier was on duty at the club pool the day Freed's son died.


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