Owners of backyard swimming pools, spas and hot tubs in El Paso may start feeling pretty hot over an ordinance City Council approved Tuesday requiring them to raise the walls or fences around their homes and to make other potentially costly changes.

Pool builders didn’t like one part of the measure that would require their customers to pay the added costs of raising the rock walls or fences around their houses or fences around pools from the standard four feet high to five feet.

And not all the parents who were present in support of tighter measures liked what the council did either. Some of them had lost children of their own in swimming pool drownings.

“We would have liked it a little stricter,” said Eddie Castle, a member of the Be Watersafe coalition that attended the meeting.

He said he wanted to see a requirement for a five-foot-high fence around backyard pools rather than allowing the primary backyard walls or fences on three sides and the house on the fourth to suffice.

Castle said there have been 13 child drownings in El Paso since 2003. Only later did he disclose that he and his wife lost their small son in a pool drowning 1-1/2 years ago.

“I didn’t want it to be about us,” he said, referring to his part in the council’s discussion.

After the meeting, Eastridge/Mid-Valley city Rep. Steve Ortega agreed with Castle and said he would propose a reconsideration of the ordinance to require a five-foot, secondary fence around new pools and existing pools that cease to be protected by grandfather provisions.

“Statistics show a fence reduces child drownings by up to 90 percent,” Ortega said, adding that the primary fence or wall around a backyard won’t save the life of a child living in or visiting a house.

His motion to require a secondary fence failed on a 3-4 vote.

Then by a 4-3 vote, the council approved the ordinance as it was presented, with a change proposed by South West city Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who added a grandfather provision to keep the requirements from applying to existing residential pools unless:

* A child under 6 years old becomes a resident of the home.

* There is a change in use or character of the house, such as being used as a daycare center.

* A new pool or spa is installed on the property or additions are made to the existing pool or spa.

The ordinance applies to permanent and nonpermanent outdoor pools, spas and hot tubs that are in-ground, above-ground or on the ground more than two-feet deep, including wading pools.

Where a house serves as part of the barrier, a five-foot high primary or secondary wall or fence will not be required if the pool is equipped an keyed, power-operated cover or screen.

In addition:

* Doors leading from the house or guest room into a yard with a swimming pool must swing away from the pool, be self closing, and self-latching and equipped with a locking device that is at least 4-1/2 feet off the ground.

* Windows facing a pool must also have a latching device 54 inches above ground.

* Sliding glass doors facing a pool must have an automatic closing and locking system.

Other changes were approved to keep children from being trapped underwater by suction from drainage and filtration systems.

Voting for the measure were O’Rourke, Westside Rep. Ann Lilly, Eastside Rep. Rachel Quintana and West-Central Rep. Susie Byrd. Voting no were Ortega, Northeast Rep. Melina Castro, and East Valley Rep. Eddie Holguin. [Editor's note: The vote was incorrectly listed and was corrected at 1 p.m. Thursday April 3]

“I don’t think we should be regulating what people do in their homes,” Holguin said.

Larry Nichols of the city’s Development Services Department said many cities have similar pool safety ordinances because drowning in home pools is a top cause of accidental deaths among very young children.

Fire Department Assistant Chief Manuel Chavira said he and his department strongly supported the additional safety requirements and urged the council to require fences to be five-feet high even though the vast majority of cities use the four-foot standard.

“We don’t want to follow the national status quo,” he said. “We want to show the city of El Paso cares about our children.”

Phoenix recently imposed a requirement for five-foot secondary fences around pools.

Patrick Tarwater, an assistant professor of Public Health at the El Paso regional campus of the UT School of Health and an adjunct assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, referred to himself as a “surviving parent” when he addressed the council in support of a stronger ordinance.

Citing statistics on child drownings and noting that 70 percent of drownings in the country happen in pools, he said barrier fences work.

“I’m here as an expert,” he said. “This is what I do. El Paso is no different than Phoenix or Tucson. I plead with you to pass this.”

His wife, Julie Tarwater, then told the council that they lost their 2-1/2 year old daughter in a pool drowning that happened in less than five minutes when she wandered unnoticed into their back yard and fell in the pool.

Westsider Lisa Turner said requiring people to build fences or raise the height of the around their yard by a foot “is going too far” and encroaches on people’s property rights.

“At some point, the government has to get out of our lives,” she said to a smattering of applause from one side of the council chambers.

Larry Davidian, a representative of Desert Sun Pools, said his company could not disagree with the city’s intent or proposals, except for the requirement to raise fence or wall heights from four feet to five feet.

He said a secondary fence is an option that 90 percent of pool buyers turn down.

A representative of Silver Springs Pool and Spa said they too are largely in favor of the ordinance.

“We believe raising a rock wall 12 inches won’t help,” he said.

Mayor Pro-Tem Susie Byrd presided at the meeting in the absence of Mayor John Cook, who was out of town.

In other business, the council:

* Approved the Parks and Recreation Department’s recommendation that the city use $4.5 million approved by voters in 2000 for a regional soccer complex on to expand add fields and lighting at Westside soccer complex and to light a set of soccer and an adjacent baseball four-plex in the Northeast. City Manager Joyce Wilson said the city can end up with 16 tournament-grade fields, 12 of them lighted and a lighted baseball complex in far less time than it would take to explore the possibility of building soccer fields on airport property. Voting no were Castro, Holguin and Quintana.

* Deleted Ortega’s proposed discussion of a rental inspection program to”promote health, safety and welfare in rental housing.”

* Approved a one-week postponement of Holguin’s discussion and action item “asking El Paso Water Uilities to hold public informational meetings in order toexplain to the citizens of El Paso how the new water rates are calculated.”

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David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or at 351-0605