Echo Valley Pool Sees Devastating End

Echo Valley Pool saw its last swim day in eighty-eight years last Sunday.

Lisa Lowell is the Operations Manager at Echo Valley.

“It’s very devastating to my family. The pool has been in my family since my grandparents bought it in 1960. My parents met there. My dad was a lifeguard there,” Lowell said. “You know it has been a part of our family and our community for long before my family got involved. And it is upsetting. It is not something that we would have ever expected to happen.”

Echo Valley closed on June 17 after a pipe burst crippled the pool.

“We had a problem with our filtration system. A pipe burst and the main pipe that connects all twelve of our sand filters,” Lowell said. “So if you can’t have filtration, you can’t have swimming.”

A Knoxville pool plumbing company offered the lowest bid at 20 thousand dollars. Insurance will not cover the repair costs, Lowell said.

“My daughter set up a GoFundMe page after several people in the community had made that suggestion,” Lowell said. “And I am cautiously optimistic in that I am not very familiar with GoFundMe as a concept.”

Lowell said her family invested already 100 thousand dollars out-of-pocket into the pool after the flood in 2010.

“You know, we have made a large investment already and we are just tapped out at this point. So we are okay if the pool doesn’t reopen,” Lowell said. “It has been a great opportunity to serve the community. I know that there is lots of potential for the pool. It is just, perhaps, maybe my turn is over. I don’t know.”

Lowell said the immense support and kindness of the community has overwhelmed Echo Valley.

“But we are hopeful it can be fixed but if it can’t we are okay,” Lowell said. “If we can’t fix it, the money from the GoFundMe will either be returned or used to help with the expenses from closing down.”

The owners hope to resolve the issue, Lowell said.

If you would like to support Echo Valley Pool, visit their Facebook Page.