A $27,000 water bill has been issued to a Japanese school after a teacher in charge of pool maintenance left a tap running for months in the hopes of preventing coronavirus infections.
From late June to early September, the teacher, who has not been identified, believed that a constant flow of fresh water into the pool would keep it free of Covid, so he left the tap on.
The pool’s water quality is normally maintained by chlorine and filtering machines, but “the teacher got the wrong idea that pouring new water in would also do the trick and even help prevent Covid,” according to local education board official Akira Kojiri.
Other employees would occasionally notice the running tap and turn it off, but the offending employee would quickly turn it back on.
As a result, an estimated 4,000 tonnes of excess water was used in just over two months, according to Kojiri, enough to fill the pool 11 times.
The teacher and two supervisors are now being demanded to pay half of the 3.5 million yen ($27,000) bill by local authorities in Yokosuka, Kanagawa prefecture, in central Japan.
Yokosuka authorities issued a statement saying, “We deeply apologise to our residents for causing (financial) damage to our city.”