FOR ABOUT 60 YEARS, Lake Worth Community High School’s swimming pool provided training waters for thousands of people — from beginners taking lessons to student athletes setting speed records to seniors relaxing with water aerobics.
These days, the pool's only users are iguanas.
The invasive tropical lizards, known to cause power outages in Lake Worth Beach, are sharing blame for the Palm Beach County School District’s recent decision to “indefinitely” close the city high school swimming pool.
“In collaboration with the Department of Health, the School District of Palm Beach County has closed the pool at Lake Worth Community High School indefinitely to ensure the safety of students and the community. Outdated equipment and environmental contaminants have compromised the pool's water quality and safety,’’ a district spokesperson said Friday in an email to ByJoeCapozzi.com.
Asked to elaborate, the spokesperson replied: “The environmental contaminants were related to iguanas.’’
Efforts have been made to maintain the pool, the district email said, but “the pool’s filtration and chemical systems are unable to adequately address the impact of environmental contaminants. There are no plans to restore the pool at this time.’’
The closing comes as Lake Worth Beach city commissioners are scheduled Dec. 3 to consider hiring another consultant to offer ideas on reopening the public oceanfront pool at the Lake Worth Beach Casino complex. When that pool closed in 2017, many swimming teachers and activity groups headed to the pool at Lake Worth High.
They weren't able to swim there for very long.
“I have not been able to teach in it since 2019,’’ said Sally Welsh, a respected swimming instructor known as “Sally The Mermaid.”
“They've had iguana issues. I used to have to go in there and clean up poop. The principal even came down and helped me one time.’’
Opened in 1962, after a 12-year campaign raised $30,000 for its construction, the pool made an instant splash, giving Lake Worth High prestige as one of the few public high schools in Palm Beach County with a pool.
"The pool is one of the No. 1 needs for the children of Lake Worth,'' R. F. Raidle, co-chairman of a pool fundraising committee, said in a 1955 article in the Lake Worth Herald. "It is a community project that every one in town should have a part in without being asked.''
In 2002, it was named the Dennis F. Dorsey Swim Complex, in honor of the former Lake Worth mayor and Lake Worth High swimming alum who poured money in the school’s swim program over the years.
That program has produced some of the fastest student swimmers in Florida, including Lake Worth High graduates Jennifer Woolf, Casey Charles and Holli Pisarski, among others. They honed their skills in the pool's six lanes, 25 yards each, in water ranging in depth from 12 feet to 4 feet and flanked by bleachers.
"We turned that little old pool into a mecca of fast swimming. Some of the fastest swimmers to ever come out of South Florida came out of that pool,’’ said Ken Caplin, who coached the high school’s talented swim teams from 1994 to 1999.
But for at least the past 10 years, the old pool has been showing its age.
“Literally the walls were crumbling. The stairs were breaking,’’ Welsh recalled. “They repaired the bathrooms and I thought they were gonna be repairing the pool. But I had a feeling, because it had been mentioned in 2015, that they were thinking about just filling it in and making it parking and it looks like that's what they might do now.’’
The district has made no public decision about the pool’s future.
Caplin, now a coach at Palm Beach Central High, remembers taking pride in looking after the Lake Worth High pool every day when he was Trojans swim coach.
“The district had a maintenance crew that did some cleaning, but in the years I was there I really was the one who took care of the pool and kept it clean and made sure it was looking good, got new bleachers bought for the pool and put in,’’ he said.
“The pool, even though it was small, was like a miniature Olympic pool. No one took care of it. To let it go like that is a shame,’’ he said.
Caplin said he purchased the pool's starting blocks for $25 each from the Mission Bay Aquatic & Diving Center in Boca Raton after that complex closed in 1991.
On Saturday, at least two of those starting blocks were occupied by lounging iguanas, which Caplin said were never an issue when he coached at Lake Worth High more than 25 years ago.
In recent years, iguanas have exploded into municipal menaces around South Florida, defecating around pools and digging burrows that cause the collapse of seawalls, sidewalks and canal banks. The towns of Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes have spent thousands of dollars hiring iguana hunters to eradicate the lizards.
Caplin said he saw an iguana the last time he was at the Lake Worth High pool, around 2019, when his visiting Palm Beach Central water polo team was playing the Trojans.
“There was an iguana that jumped in before the water polo. We chased it out and then we played,’’ he said.
He said the water was a “light green color'' that day, indicating to him that the pool wasn't getting proper maintenance.
“We went into the pump room and the chlorine was completely empty. So whoever was servicing the pool then was not doing it properly,’’ Caplin said.
“If there's no chlorine kept in the pool and it's not maintained, that's when the iguanas jump in. If it was nice and sparkly blue like it's supposed to be, the iguanas wouldn't get in it. Whether it's got filter issues, I have no idea. It didn't years ago. Maybe the system is shot. Who knows?’’
Caplin said he plans to reach out to the athletic director to make sure the water polo goals, worth “thousands of dollars,” are not thrown away.
At least one former coach would like to see the school district spend money to repair the pool and make it available again to students and the community.
“Closing it would be a mistake, because it could serve the community in so many ways with the right person in charge of it,’’ said Glenn Stubbs, a Lake Worth High history teacher who coached the swim team from 2014 to 2018.
Stubbs said he thinks the pool was last used by students around or just after the pandemic.
“The pool is a mess right now,’’ he said. “When I was head coach, I was trying to get them to fix the pool, to refurbish it. The shell is good, but the pipes and everything (else) is like living in 1955.’’
He said his requests were ignored, even though he always pointed out that Lake Worth High is one of few public high schools in the county with a swimming pool.
“You need somebody in charge to see the potential of what the pool could be for the community and save it,’’ he said.
“Right now, it's a pond for the iguanas. It has so much more potential. It should not go to waste.’’
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.