The water in the Maria Lenk Aquatics Center mysteriously turned green earlier in the week, and, despite promises from officials to return it to blue, the situation has remained unsolved.
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A maintenance worker added 160 liters of hydrogen peroxide to the pool 10 days ago, neutralizing the chlorine and letting all manner of nastiness grow in the water.
Rio Olympics spokesperson Mario Andrada said the “radical measure” had been taken after discussions with aquatics body FINA. Wednesday. The water polo pool also turned green.
“We’re going to grab the water from the warm-up pool and we’re going to drain the water from the competition pool, and we’re going to insert this water from the warm-up pool into the competition pool”, he explained.
That was necessary, he said, to ensure clear water for synchronised swimming judges and competitors, with the majority of the competition taking place under water.
Despite the green color, officials have maintained throughout that the water does not present any health risk to its entrants.
He said the colour change on Tuesday was due to 80 litres of hydrogen peroxide being mistakenly added to the pool by a local contractor on August 5.
While both pools seem to be improving a bit, Nascimento said there was not enough time to complete the cleaning process by Sunday.
Asked if they had a Plan B, Andrada said: “We do but we always found Plan A is better than Plan B”.
While the women’s 3-meter springboard semifinals were held at one end of the facility Saturday, the bigger pool was slowly being drained. After divers and water polo athletes began using the pools at the start of the Games, the neutralized chlorine spurred the proliferation of organic compounds, The Times reported.
“I could barely open my eyes for the final quarter”, Team USA men’s water polo captain Tony Azevedo told reporters last week. We truly hope that in the first 12-hour cycle, we are going to see a sensible reaction on the overall aesthetics of the water. The Olympic organizers had replaced the waters of the green pools on Saturday through Sunday amid concerns over the athletes’ health and the disturbance the murky waters pose to the water competitions. Athletes have complained that the water or chemicals have hurt their eyes, and the murkiness makes it hard to see underwater.
They’re going to drain out the green water from the synchronized swimming pool at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Center and pump in almost 1 million gallons of new water from a practice pool.
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Andrada said he was sorry to have promised at several points that the problem would be cleared up right away.
