CBS Blames Gas Prices for Swimming Pool Crisis in Louisville

Just when you thought every possible gas price angle had been explored by the media, they found another fresh angle - gas prices are forcing cutbacks within the Louisville, Ky. municipal government, including swimming pools that little girls will be deprived of.

"When we arrived in Louisville [Ky.], we headed straight for the Breslin Park pool," CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes said on the May 15 "Evening News." "Half the city's public pools will be padlocked this summer leaving these little girls high and dry."

Cordes's "CBS Evening News" story was a part of its "Eye on the Road" series - an effort to show how people are affected by gas prices throughout the country. For the series two reporters have been driving across the country in opposite directions, one in a Toyota Prius and the other in a Ford Fusion.

Despite the city of Louisville's 6-percent sales tax rate, the municipal government was forced to seek budget cutbacks because of the high gas prices, hence the city's dry pool, Cordes reported.

"I thought it couldn't be true until I really came here and actually saw it, that it was - that it didn't have any water," said seven-year-old Lydia Kinloch.

Cordes interviewed the mayor of Louisville, Jerry Abramson, a Democrat, whose solution to the fuel costs is to buy hybrid vehicles.