LOCALS have branded a much-loved attraction as a huge waste of money after it was forced to close for months.
Britain’s first ever “geothermal lido has been forced to shut over winter because holes weren’t drilled deep enough to get access to sufficiently warm water.
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The Jubilee Pool in Penzance, Cornwall, had £1.8million spent on it for an upgrade three years ago and was meant to operate all year round by using underground thermals to heat seawater to a balmy 35C in a cheap and eco-friendly way.
Bosses though, have now been forced to admit the system was “not quite as efficient as we hoped it would be” and using electric heaters made it “extremely expensive to run”.
Locals in the Cornish town, who stumped up £540,000 for the upgrade, have now blasted the closure.
They say the geothermal system failed because contractors did not drill sufficient deep enough.
Marine engineer Matthew Underwood, 45, told the Daily Mail: “It’s the biggest waste of money you could possibly imagine.
“What’s the point? The geothermal system doesn’t work because they couldn’t go deep enough.
“Last year they got given an award for it – how can you reward something that doesn’t work? It’s a failure.”
He said that he grew up using the pool and can remember the days when it cost a pound and you could go in and out all day long.
While he added that he was “up” for things being modernised, he said there was nothing wrong with the place to start with.
Local resident Alan Just, 73, said it was a “failed project” and they were just trying to “make the best of a bad job”.
Without the heating, he said it was nothing more than a white elephant.
Alan said that he wouldn’t mind if it was just closed for January and February but added that it would be shut all the way through to May.
The pool had originally been due to open in 2019 but just before the launch it was found that contractors had “encountered some unforeseen delays with the geothermal well”.
Bosses claimed Geothermal Energy Limited (GEL), which owns and operates the geothermal well next to the pool, had “originally planned to drill deeper for higher temperatures, however encountered a zone of very high water flow at 410m below the ground.
“Given the risks of drilling further and potential well collapse, their geothermal team decided to stop drilling”.
Sue Knapman, 53, who has lived in Penzance all her life said: “I heard they didn’t go deep enough, the geothermal heating has been a problem since day one.
“I was shocked when I first heard it had closed, we thought the geopool would be all year round.”
The lido is now due to reopen between May and October this year, with repairs to the sea wall and work on the geothermal facilities to take place over winter.
Nicola Murdoch, chief executive of the pool, said: “The risk that comes with using innovative technologies and being the first of its kind in the country is it is not necessarily going to work as it might look like it is going to on paper.
“We need to top up some of the heat ourselves, but obviously the extreme hike in energy costs that’s happened in the past 18 months are completely beyond our control.
“It’s cost us more than we anticipated in terms of running costs so we needed to take a proactive approach to ensure our sustainability and the future of the pool.
“Combined with that inefficiency in the system, it is just extremely expensive to run.”
Penzance mayor Stephen Reynolds described the winter closure as disappointing.
He said: “It came as a bit of a surprise but I can understand the decision.
‘From a personal point of view, the long-term future of the pool is the most important thing.”
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