commercial applications, including to carbonate beers and sodas, and without carbon dioxide, breweries would be forced to shut down. So the priority is to provide carbon dioxide to restaurants and breweries over pools.

To regulate pH, swimming pools can use muriatic acid instead, whereas restaurants and breweries have no alternative. So the city’s pools have switched over to muriatic acid, but there have still been consequences, because it has to be added manually.

And that manual chemical input has meant that pools have been forced to change their operating hours. City custodians stop work at around 4 p.m., and because of the need to ensure that the pools water chemistry is safely maintained at all times, the pools are now closing about an hour after the employees go home for the day.

That’s meant that the swimmers who use the pools have had their pool time cut in half.

Ky Wong, coach of the Manoa Aquatics swim club, said that swimmers normally practice five days a week for nearly two hours. Now, they’re only allowed to use the pool from 4-5 p.m. three days a week. And that reduced practice time has made it difficult for his swim team to improve, Wong said, and they aren’t happy. The disruption in the supply chain is truly showing how intricately interconnected everything really is.