Roberto Clemente Park pool reopens after lengthy closure

The Town of Islip on Saturday reopened the Roberto Clemente Park pool in Brentwood, after six years of closure and community frustration at delays.

The town received permission from the Suffolk County Department of Health Services to reopen the pool late Friday, parks Commissioner Thomas Owens said as he stood on a new concrete pool deck next to the shimmering renovated pool.

The pool was first closed after the summer season of 2012 because of budget cuts, its planned 2014 reopening delayed by the discovery that year of nearly 40,000 tons of contaminated debris that had been illegally dumped in the park.

Pool reconstruction began last year. Owens said weather issues — including a snowy March and an unseasonably cold spring — and the severity of damage to the pool led to a later opening than originally planned.

For example, the sides of the empty pool were “cracked and pulverized” because of the freezing and thawing of water and had to be replaced.

“The floor was the only thing left,” he said. “Everything else had to be completely reconstructed.”

This summer, “except for the weather, we never missed a beat. We worked every day we could,” he said.

Herbie Medina, 35, who formed the organization Uplift Brentwood after frustration at what he and others believed was the town’s lack of urgency in trying to reopen the pool, said by phone Saturday that he and others are “ecstatic” the pool is finally open.

“It’s a long time waiting for the reopening,” he said.

Medina said the town in the past had not kept the community well-informed about developments in the pool reconstruction, but he praised Owens for doing so this summer and said workers “moved at a pretty good pace” over the past few months to finish the work.

The pool will be free for the rest of the summer, town spokeswoman Caroline Smith said. It will be open daily through Labor Day.

Owens and Smith did not immediately know the final cost for the pool reconstruction.

For the first hour and a half the pool was open, there were only two people there other than lifeguards. About 30 other kids and adults arrived in the following two hours.

Medina said the town notified him on Friday of the reopening but officials should have contacted more community organizations and used more social media to spread word of the reopening.

“I don’t think it was promoted enough,” he said.

Smith said “the public was notified through our web page and our Facebook page.” The news media was not notified “because our press event [on the reopening] will be next week.”

Owens said the rain earlier Saturday and forecast for more may have reduced turnout.

A grand opening is planned for the near future, Smith said.

Stalin Gonzaga, 42, and son Jahdiel, 6, who live about three blocks from the pool, were the first patrons.

“I’m so happy because now we can come to the pool as a family in the last days of summer,” Gonzaga said during a break from splashing around with his son and teaching him to swim.

Edwin Reyes, 30, said he, his wife and their two children, ages 3 and 5, had traveled to a pool in Hauppauge several times this summer. On Saturday, they were playing in the Clemente pool.

“This is nicer and closer,” said Reyes, who lives about a mile from Clemente Park.

Owens pointed to the new amenities throughout the pool area, including rubberized metal tables and seats, newly sodded grounds, new lounge chairs and repainted restrooms and locker rooms.

The pool reopening came on what would have been the 84th birthday of Clemente, a baseball Hall of Famer who died in a 1972 plane crash.

Next to the pool grounds is a fenced-off area that will contain a $2 million spray park that Owens said the town hopes to open some time next summer. Officials broke ground on it last month.

With Rachelle Blidner