MT Helena residents met last week to discuss the lack of community access to Mt Helena aquatic centre, asking for increased opening times, an extended opening season, more and varied programs, and heating and lighting.

Mt Helena swimming club president Wade Isard said two months of public access to the nearest aquatic facility annually was not enough and the lack of lighting and heating for the colder seasons deterred winter visitors.

“People aren’t going to turn up to a pool at 20 degrees or less if they’re out swimming,” he said.

“They’ve got this facility up there that they’re not utilising.

“The population’s increasing everywhere – it’s increasing up in the hills as well.

“The Royal Life Saving (State of Australian Aquatic Facilities 2025) document talks about having a facility for every 20,000 people.

“There’s over 40,000 in the Shire of Mundaring which would qualify, and look, it’s not as simple as this but it did give an idea that two pools can exist up in the shire.

“The shire is absolutely mad to consider the Mt Helena pool as an economic impost in some way, which is what they seem to be doing when the school (and) the education department actually pays 50 per cent of the operational cost.”

This was confirmed in the September 2017 ordinary council meeting minutes which said the Department of Education would continue to contribute to 50 per cent of the operating cost of utilities, stores, general maintenance, vandal damage and security patrols.

The department also paid for 33.33 per cent of the aquatics coordinator’s annual salary.

“In September 2017, the council voted to decrease the opening season of the pool from 22 to nine weeks,” Mr Isard said.

“The shire’s report at the time recommended that this was to save costs, whilst council considered ceasing all public access to pool for the foreseeable future.

“This decision was made without community consultation as it was ‘not considered necessary’ according to the shire’s report, which at the time triggered a strong community backlash.”

In Pool cuts put council in hot water (Echo News, December 9, 2017) it was reported an online petition to save Mt Helena pool gained more than 800 signatures in its first two days and surpassed its 1000 signatures target.

Former Swan Hills MLA Jessica Shaw listed saving the Mt Helena pool from closure as one of her notable advocacy projects during her time in politics as reported in Swan Hills MLA to retire (Echo News, June 6, 2024).

“The Mt Helena Aquatic Centre is located on the grounds of the Eastern Hills Senior High School and at the time the community’s overwhelming response prevented the pool from being decommissioned and swayed the council’s decision in 2019 to enter a 10-year licence agreement with the Department of Education for shared use and management of the pool,” Mr Isard said.

“This however did not return the pools opening dates and times to the pre 2017 council decision, and in 2025 the pool remains closed to the public for 10 months of the year.”

Mr Isard said he had been contacting the Shire of Mundaring to discuss the pricing of a heating and lighting system.

“The shire did look into the lighting, and they came up to the same monetary capital cost figure that I did and I have been saying the same for about two or three years previously which is that the lighting will cost installed, and this is the worst case scenario: $80,000.

“The heat pump costs about $90,000 but that is not installed.

“So all up the heating and lighting installed offsets around $250,000 capital investment which is pretty low when you are considering a new aquatic facility it will be tens of millions of dollars.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is a no-brainer: very low capital costs, quite low running costs compared to any other aquatic facility and it’s satisfying a need and a catchment of 20,000 of community members that just doesn’t exist without this pool.

“So at the moment, it really doesn’t exist because it’s only open for two months of the year because there’s no heating and lighting, and they don’t run programs there.”

The Shire of Mundaring has been contacted for comment.