main building at 199 Chambers St., shortly after the terrorist attacks. In order to create temporary classrooms to accommodate students from the badly damaged Fiterman Hall, at Park Place and Greenwich Street, the school moved equipment from its fitness center and other rooms into the empty pool, according to BMCC spokeswoman Lou Anne Bulik.

The pool was supposed to reopen later in the fall, Bulik said, but the filtration system was found to be damaged. She could not say what caused the damage or why the pool hadn’t been repaired.

"I suspect it hasn’t happened yet because of financial reasons," Bulik said. "Our financial situation is not good." The school has suffered from city budget cuts and lost lease income from Fiterman Hall, which was badly damaged in the attack.

"A lot of staff people at the school want like to swim there and want the pool open," Bulik said. "But in the overall scheme of things, the pool is not as important as the nuts and bolts of academic courses, in terms of our overall mission."

Some frustrated swimmers have lobbied the college to reopen the pool, which used to be available to the community at certain times of the day.

Hal Bromm, a Tribeca resident who used to be a regular swimmer, sent BMCC’s president, Antonio Perez, a letter about the pool in December, after Perez’s office did not return phone calls. Bromm said that staff at the school’s continuing education department, which runs community recreation programs, and the physical education department told him they didn’t know when the pool would reopen.

"It became clear that the pool is just sitting there, and no one seems to be doing anything to get it open," Bromm said.

Stein wrote to Perez on Oct. 24, but says she never received a response.

"I can appreciate the problems the college has," she said. "We know the college is under great stress. We as community members will do everything we can to help, if they’ll will just communicate with us."

If the pool was damaged as an indirect result of the Trade Center disaster, the swimmers say, BMCC should be able to receive money for repairs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Bulik said she wasn’t sure if the school had applied for FEMA money for the pool or whether the agency would even cover the damage. "Nothing is straightforward with FEMA," she said. "FEMA doesn’t give you money to fix things. They reimburse you after you’ve spent money. We still need the money to do it.

While the pool remains empty, swimmers continue to miss their morning laps. "It’s one more thing that we can’t normalize," Bromm said, "and that’s painful."