Tauranga has been urged to plan to build a specialist aquatic sports pool to help lift the area above its near-bottom ranking in a national study of public swimming pools.
Paul Kayes, a leading surf lifesaving and water polo administrator, said a 2-metre deep 25m pool would cater for sports such as water polo and synchronised swimming that were competing for limited pool space in Tauranga.
Mr Kayes backed his request by highlighting an in-depth study commissioned by Sport New Zealand that showed the Bay of Plenty was under-supplied by four pools, with only Northland's shortage of five lifting the Bay off bottom spot.
He said the figures for the Bay of Plenty were a reflection of the situation in Tauranga and the rest of the Western Bay. The report, which benchmarked each region against a set of requirements, showed that seven of New Zealand's 13 regions were over-supplied with standard-sized pools - an Olympic pool was counted as two standard pools.
Mr Kayes pitched the idea to the council this week at the same time as he stated his opposition to the council's plan to cut costs by an earlier closing of Baywave.