EDITORIAL: Health department bureaucrats wage war on exercise

What happens in Las Vegas happens only here — unless you’re trying to go for a swim.

The Las Vegas Athletic Club recently closed their swimming pools. They aren’t the only ones. This year, EOS Fitness permanently closed some of its pools, too.

These fitness businesses aren’t responding to consumer demand but government dictates. The Southern Nevada Health District now requires athletic club pools to have a lifeguard on duty. The cost of such a mandate has led to the pool closures.

Previously, these companies were allowed to operate their pools without a lifeguard. LVAC said it had done so for 42 years. What spurred the change was a tragic drowning at a LVAC pool in February. A video showed Leticia Triplett, 58, apparently suffering a heart attack while trying to leave a health club pool. She struggled to stay up before falling into the water. No one noticed her for around 10 minutes. As a result, she drowned.

That was a terrible tragedy. But it doesn’t justify these new regulations.

To start, the health district’s rule is an affront to personal freedom. A private company has the right to offer its members use of an unmonitored pool. You have the right to swim in that pool, assuming any risk that goes with it. You also have the right to not join that club or not swim in that pool. That this is happening in Las Vegas, which built a global brand on adult indulgence, is especially ironic.

Next, if the district is allowed to unilaterally impose such an arbitrary edict, it’s hard to find a limiting principle to its nanny state power. HOA pools without lifeguards would conceivably be more dangerous because kids use them. Same with backyard pools.

Last year, two women died while hiking at Valley of Fire State Park. From July 2013 to July 2023, more than 200 people died in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. And then there’s driving. In 2022, more than 400 people in Nevada died in car crashes.

Thousands of people would presumably be alive today if government bureaucrats a decade ago had banned outdoor recreation and driving.

But they didn’t. The benefits of being outside and reliable transportation far outweigh the costs. This is what health department bean counters aren’t measuring. For some, swimming is the best or perhaps the only exercise they’re able to do. That group includes many who are elderly or disabled. Passing regulations that lead to pool closures will have a negative impact on the health of those individuals, even if it’s hard to measure. It’s a mistake to only account for the obvious.

Open the pools.