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The World’s Deepest Pool Could Be Happening, and It Will Help People

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The current deepest pool in the world can be found at a facility in Italy, but one man is going to great depths (sorry) to change that.

Jim Elliot, founder of Diveheart, a nonprofit organization that works with individuals by providing them with educational scuba diving programs, is working with city officials to build a 150-foot deep warm water pool in Aurora, Illinois, a city in close proximity to Chicago medical research institutions, which would be used for research, rehabilitation, and educational training purposes. The therapeutic benefits of underwater activity have long been helping those with illnesses and disabilities, and Diveheart has been a major proponent of the cause.

Diveheart works with people with both physical and developmental disabilities, injuries, impairments, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and more, providing them with a no-gravity physical therapy environment where “everyone is equal.”

Elliot chose 150 feet for a couple reasons: to do any technical diving, you need at least 130 feet, and this would definitely help the facility to obtain more commercial opportunities. Also, he found out about the 137-foot deep pool in Italy and just straight up was like, “Why not go deeper?”

Why not, indeed. If you’re going to build a really deep pool, you might as well build the deepest pool in the whole dang world.

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