Pool Reopens, Spa Stays Closed At Best Western Hotel

By John Severance

SOCORRO -- The New Mexico Environmental Board and Health Department reopened the pool at the Best Western Socorro Inn and Suites Tuesday, but the spa will remain closed until either the end of the week or beginning of next week.
The pool and the spa had been closed since May 7 after two people from South Carolina contracted Legionnaires Disease (a type of pneumonia) after staying at the hotel. Environmental Department program manager Raj Solomon said the firefighters, who were attending a seminar at EMRTC, had used the pool and spa, but he could not say definitively that the hotel was the source. Solomon said they were both hospitalized and one of them spent time in the intensive care unit but they are fine now.
“There is no definitive evidence,” Solomon said Tuesday. “It could be. It may be. It may be not. The health department did investigate and it found out these people had used the spa. It could be a likely source. But we can’t say definitely.”
Chad Smelser, who headed the investigation by the Health Department, is still waiting on some final reports. “We are done,” he said Wednesday.
When asked if the health department was going to investigate anywhere else in Socorro, Smelser said, “No.”
When asked what his final report was going to say, Smelser said, “The hotel is the likely source.”
The hotel owner, mayor Ravi Bhasker, said the spa did not pass the test because the water fell short of the 4 parts per million of bromine parameter.
“We had agreed to keep the level at 4 parts/million bromine,” Bhasker said Tuesday. “We had it up to 4.2 or 4.3. They tested it and it was at 3.6 something. We made a deal with them that it would be above four and it was not at four. We are going to raise the bromine levels and we are going to try to get them to come back as soon as possible to retest it.”
Bhasker said his hotel has gone through the remediation process, including 26 hours of hyperchlorination.
The Best Western hired a company that used high concentrates of chlorine and that was followed by a scrub and the surfaces were treated with disinfectants.
Bhasker said during the first month they will take cultures twice. Then it will be a monthly procedure and then quarterly.
“There were no other violations and we will inform you of when we will open the spa,” Bhasker said.
Solomon said it will be up to the hotel to follow its consultant’s (Evidence Based Solutions out of Chicago) recommendations.
Calls to EBSol consultant Gunner Lyslo were not returned.
Marie Yarroll from the Best Western headquarters in Phoenix said in an email, “Each Best Western hotel is independently owned and operated.
“We have been advised by the hotel’s owner that the New Mexico Department of Health has concluded its investigation, and that an independent third-party consultant did not find a link between the hotel and the health incident. It is also our understanding that the owner of the hotel cooperated fully with the investigation, and continues to safely operate his hotel.”
Legionnaires disease got its name in 1976 when many people who went to an American Legion convention in Philadelphia suffered from an outbreak of the disease, which is a type of pneumonia.

Pool Reopens, Spa Stays Closed At Best Western Hotel