Hughes sounds off about Oregon Health Authority pool regulations
By Terry Murry on Wednesday, May 27th, 2026 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – A new state rule for municipal swimming facilities states that swimmers younger than 14 have to be under the supervision of a person 18 or older for all swim activities. That impacts a wide range of young people who have limited summertime activities in the first place.
Pendleton Parks and Recreation Director Liam Hughes found a loophole that means the Pendleton Family Aquatic Center will not implement the rule this summer. The regulation allows pools to delay implementation of the rules until they next plan to update their rules signage. Hughes said the rule would be a major change and his department wants to wait until it’s discussed with both the Pendleton Parks Commission and possibly the Pendleton City Council.
Hughes said he understands the logic behind the rule change because Pendleton’s lifeguards frequently have to go into the water to save kids from drowning because they can’t swim.
“However, I would like to propose a different solution: Teaching kids how to swim,” he said. “I personally would like to see a statewide initiative to teach kids to swim rather than increasing restrictions. There is absolutely no reason why every child in Oregon shouldn’t be able to swim long before age 11. If a child can swim proficiently, being at the pool at that age would not pose a significant safety difference to being at a park playground.”
The age rule isn’t the only one that concerns Hughes. The Oregon Health Authority states it conducted a “thorough public process” prior to implementing the rules. However, Hughes doesn’t believe they consulted the Oregon Recreation and Parks Association, which has a robust aquatics session. He says the rules “massively increase” the number of pages of regulations pools have to follow and have caused confusion at facilities across the state.
He foresees problems with two more of the rules and gave examples of why:
Rule 5.7.3.7.4 states that “only manufacturer-approved OEM replacement parts shall be used” (this is pertaining to automatic controllers and monitoring equipment). This gives a massive opportunity to equipment manufacturers to charge outrageous prices for essential parts, and facilities will have no choice but to pay it. It is my understanding that there are laws on the books in Oregon in other sectors, such as the “right to repair” law which specifically restricted this practice with consumer electronics. So I was shocked to see a new rule document containing language like this. There is also a large grey area in the law, for example if a 3/8” NPT fitting broke on a pipe within the chlorine erosion feeder. A 3/8” NPT pipe fitting would be available from almost any hardware store, but under the strict letter of the new law, I am not sure if I would be required to order this part from the original equipment manufacturer, which might not be a big deal in a major metropolitan area with an authorized distributer (except maybe paying 10 times the price), but for us it would mean shutting the pool down for a week while we wait for a part to be shipped from Seattle. Now I don’t think that was ever the intention of the law, but that is why I personally believe when it comes to code like this less is more, you should only write things into code that are absolutely essential and have no grey area.
Similar to the rule stated above there is another rule that requires us to only use chemicals in our erosion feeders that are authorized by the equipment manufacturer. Public agencies have requirements to collect bids before purchasing materials that exceed certain thresholds. For us here at the City of Pendleton we are required to get three bids on orders that exceed $10,000. Our yearly chlorine bill is way over that, so we would traditionally solicit bids to make sure we were getting the best price, as I read the new rules that is no longer allowed, and we are required to buy chlorine from our chlorination systems authorized dealer for our region. This again gives the potential for retailers to increase the price of essential products and our only choice would be to pay it, or replace our entire chlorination system with a different brand that is willing to offer us better pricing on the chemicals.
The Pendleton Family Aquatic Center opens Saturday, June 6
Photo from Pendleton Aquatic Center Facebook
