First it was toilet paper...now chlorine?

Were you one of the thousands that built a pool last year because you were stuck at home? According to News Center Maine, you are not alone. There is a nationwide chlorine shortage that could get worse just when you need it - this summer.

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Experts say that it's not going to be desperate times, but you may have to go a couple of days without that pool sparkling clean. There's all sorts of things contributing to the shortage and the price hikes that are happening. Number one, people built pools when everything shut down. If ya can't go to the water, bring the water to you! Especially in the nothern half of the country - where we typically don't have pools. We got us some pools!

Also, there was a chemical plant fire that apparently hurt manufacturing. This fire was last August in Louisiana, just before people started to shut down their pools for the season.

When supply goes down and the demand goes up, so do the prices. In the article from News Center Maine, they noted that Fortune reported that a 50 pound bucket of In Swim brand three-inch stablized chlorine tablets went from 109 dollars to 169.99 on Amazon. Yikes. It looks like liquid chlorine is still pretty available, but that could also go up!

 

LOOK: Here are the 50 best beach towns in America

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.

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