Thirteen people from Katherine took the Defence Department up on their invitation to swim at the Tindal pool yesterday.
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The RAAF Base Tindal pool was opened to the public yesterday after the town’s public swimming pool was closed due to unsafe levels of PFAS chemicals detected in the water.
Katherine Town Council closed the town pool for a fortnight to fix the problem.
The safe level of PFAS for recreational water use is 0.7 micrograms per litre.
The Tindal swimming pool has only ever been tested once and returned a reading of 0.45 micrograms per litre.
The defence pool is filled with town water which had an average recording of 0.01 migrograms per litre in September.
Experts are now trying to determine how the PFAS levels increased 40 fold between the tap and the pool.
The Katherine town pool has been tested three times and returned readings of 0.6 and 0.54 and 0.84.
The YMCA Term 4 Swim Lessons which start on Monday have been relocated to the Tindal pool.
Meanwhile Katherine MLA Sandra Nelson released incorrect PFAS readings on her public Facebook site.
Ms Nelson has said readings are 0.045 instead of the correct 0.45.
Ms Nelson said it was a “typo” and has since corrected it.