‘Extremely Concerning’: Comptroller Blasts Adams Admin. For Red Hook Pool Closure

Brad Lander is wading into the Red Hook Pool fight.

The Comptroller wants to know why, exactly, the Olympic-sized public pool — a “critical resource” in these brutally hot days — remains closed more than a month after the scheduled opening day.

In a letter to the Parks Department sent on Tuesday morning, Lander pressed the city to open the neighborhood’s only public pool and explain why it has withheld summer relief from 25,000 sweltering New Yorkers since June, when a busted pipe was discovered.

“I’m writing to express serious concern about the abrupt and extended closure of Red Hook Pool, and to request information needed to hold the city accountable for reopening the pool as quickly as possible,” Lander wrote to Parks Commissioner Iris Rodriguez-Rosa. “The administration’s sudden announcement that the Red Hook Pool would remain closed for most of the season, with no notice to residents who rely on the pool as a critical lifeline on hot summer days, is extremely concerning.”

Pointing to this summer’s particularly punishing weather — with New York streets expected to hit a heat index of triple digits this week alone — the former mayoral candidate added that “pools play an indispensable role in keeping New Yorkers cool” and urged the city to fix the problem immediately.

Lander lamented the inevitable tendency of aging infrastructure to fail without notice, given that the Parks Department blames the tragic pool closure on a crucial waterline that burst as city workers first attempted to fill the 1.2 million gallon concrete tub “days before the pool was slated to open” on June 29.

He insisted, however, for “public transparency on the status of the Red Hook Pool.”

“We recognize that aging infrastructure can fail unexpectedly,” Lander wrote. “However, it is equally important that residents are kept informed when failures occur and provided with viable alternatives during any service disruptions.”

The letter addresses many of the community’s complaints. Then unaware of the closure, Red Hook residents showed up on the opening day of the summer pool season with young children in tow and beach towels in hand before recreation staff turned them away at the door, much to their surprise. 

To one resident, the city’s lack of communication was unacceptable.

“When on opening day, there’s no messaging? All of that shows a lack of respect, more than the lack of a pool,” said Alan Mukamal, who has lived in the area for two decades and launched the advocacy group Friends of the Red Hook Pool. “What you need to do is be respectful of people and be honest and transparent.”

At the very least, Lander asked the Parks Department to guess an “anticipated date” for the reopening; on this the agency has been unclear: in June, the Parks Department announced on its website that the pool would open mid-July, yet the same webpage now lists mid-August as the target date.

That would mean, however, that repairs would need to be finished soon enough to allow a week to actually refill the pool — and even then, Red Hookers would only have until on Sept. 7 to conveniently cool off.

Lander also questioned what, in the meantime, the city could do to cool down Red Hook, floating the idea of bringing back “Swimmobiles” and other mobile options.

Like many Red Hook residents, Lander also wants to know how, exactly, the Parks Department could have overlooked such a debilitating issue as the broken pipe, despite the recreation facility being open for inspection year round.

“Prior to discovering the broken pipe days before the pool was slated to open, what steps did the Parks Department take to inspect and assess the state of good repair for the Red Hook Pool?” he asked the Parks Commissioner. “What is the Parks Department doing to speed up the timeline for repairing the disintegrated pipe?”

The letter, sent Tuesday morning, requests a response from the Parks Department within a week.

The Comptroller did not cast wide blame for the closure on the Adams administration, while other elected officials have. Some, like City Council Member Alexa Avilés, have pinned the pool closure on a history of underinvestment in the Red Hook neighborhood, which is home to the city’s second largest public housing development, and Mayor Adams’s continued budget cuts for the Parks Department.

“Mayor Adams has unnecessarily cut staff for the past three years, even with a surplus in the budget, even when that has put a strain on the Parks Department,” Avilés said. “That puts the system in an unsustainable place.”

If those cuts hadn’t happened, the pipe burst “could have” been avoided, Avilés said.

“Had we had a better budget, things would operate better. We’d have equipment, staff, and facilities that are in better states of repair,” she said. “This is an old facility and it needs to be upgraded — there’s no way around it.”

Update: After initial publication of this story, Parks Department spokesperson Meghan Lalor sent over a statement that did not address many of Lander’s concerns:

Parks regularly inspects all of our outdoor pool infrastructure during the season — with at least two inspections of each pool. We have already worked fast to expedite a custom repair for Red Hook, and expect to reopen the pool in mid-August. We know how much these facilities mean to the public, and as soon as we knew of the closure we notified all elected officials in this district, posted signage on site, and posted a notice on our website which has also been shared through Notify NYC.

The Parks Department also said that it would respond to Lander’s letter directly.