Virginia Department of Health

 

GDForum ID: 2334

Description of Proposed Guidance Document Changes

The Swimming Pool and Hot Tub Enforcement Manual (Manual) is a new guidance document intended to assist environmental health staff navigate the enforcement processes of the Virginia regulatory pool program (12VAC5-460 and 12VAC5-462). Enforcement of the pool regulations may provide complex scenarios for local health departments (LHDs) as the state pool regulations do not specify or provide codified enforcement processes for non-compliance with the regulations. The enforcement manual discusses Virginia Department of Health (VDH) authority to enforce existing pool regulations, identifies public health threats specific to aquatic venues, outlines what types of observations could trigger corrective action or enforcement, and identifies different enforcement activities an LHD can pursue. State pool regulations do not assign risk to specific regulatory violations. Risk must be assessed and determined by the environmental health staff during the inspection. Therefore, it is essential that staff understand and determine the risks associated with the operation, maintenance, and use of an aquatic venue. The manual is to be used as a guide on how LHDs can enforce pool violations and better protect public health and safety through understanding and assessing risk associated with observed regulatory violations. To assist environmental health staff in determining risk, the manual identifies specific regulations that may present risk to pool operation and use. The manual references guidance from the Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC) and the scientific rationale for the standards in the MAHC are provided in the Annex to the Model Aquatic Health Code (https://www.cdc.gov/mahc/index.html). The MAHC is a national set of standards for aquatic facilities adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Awareness and understanding of risk and potential hazards can assist environmental health staff in establishing a level of risk to an observed violation. This manual considers certain violations to be high, moderate, or low risk and discusses possible public health threats.

 

Guidance Document(s) for this Comment Forum

Document ID	Document Title	Current Document	Proposed Document	Revised Proposed
ENV(GS)-2025-01	Swimming Pool and Hot Tub Enforcement Manual	n/a	Proposed Document		Posted with original changes on 02/12/2026

 

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