Salsa Mishap Has Town Spending $20K to Clean Pool

Snacking on chips and salsa by the pool might sound like a great way to summer. For residents of Needham, Massachusetts, it turned into a big bummer instead. Boston 25 reports a patron brought a glass jar of salsa to the Rosemary Recreation Complex on Sunday. It broke, and pieces of glass went into the lap pool—prompting its closure and a jaw-dropping clean-up estimate of between $15,000 and $20,000.

"That's the rough estimate I'm getting from folks at [the Department of Public Works] and looking at the numbers and looking at overtime and staff labor and all the chemicals and everything," Parks & Rec Director Stacey Mulroy tells the Needham Observer. A Facebook post from the town explains the multi-phase clean-up process, which involves draining the 220,000-gallon pool, powerwashing and then vacuuming it with a wet/dry vacuum before refilling and doing the necessary chemical rebalancing and bacteria testing.

"We understand that this closure may be frustrating for many, as it is for us," the post added, tacking on a reminder that glass is not permitted in the pool at any time. The incident was "avoidable and unfortunate," the town noted. Mulroy explains why the response had to be so extreme because of the glass shards. "They can float into somebody's eye or somebody's mouth or into their lungs if they ingest shards of glass." (More strange stuff stories.)