This is my first of soon to be many posts to the forum. I have been servicing my pool for 14 trouble free years until about a three months ago. I have been relying on my pool supply store to do most of the water testing. I would do simple chlorine and PH testing a couple of times a week using a very simple taylor kit. I have been using the 3" free floating tabs since pool was opened in 2000 and shocking (SLAMMING) weekly during the swim season. I have religiously cleaned the filter cartridges anytime I had a back pressure change of 8 psi. I replace the cartridges every 4 years. I use a Poly 60 algicide for routine maintenance. I filter the pool year round 10 hours and day cleaning the pool skimmer, pump strainer and suction inline strainer every Saturday morning. About three month ago I noticed my FC level was almost zero. I increased the openings of the free floater holding the 3" tabs to increase the chlorine level and added 2 lbs of shock. the FC level two days later was again almost zero. Took a water sample to my regular pool supply store for checking and was told I needed to add 10 lbs of a chemical to balance the the water. PH was 7.4 and FC and CC was zero. I now had started to develop a very small amount of green algae. I added a second free floater of 3" tabs to try and increase the FC levels. I now had 10 3" tabs slowly dissolving into the pool with no increase in the FC. PH was stating to drop (7.0) so I added 5 lbs of PH plus. By this time I had started to develop a pink algae in a couple of small places by the steps. Went back to the pool store and was sold a product called "Pink Treat". Applied this product as instructed and all traces of the "Pink Algae"are gone. At this point in the story I decided to do some internet searching for my FC problem and pink algae problem. I came upon TFP and found a wealth of information. I have learned about you guessed it "CYA levels". I also learned about "Sodium Bromide". Based upon the TFP recommendations I ordered a Taylor 2006 test kit and decided to do more extensive testing than just FC and PH. here are the test results taken this morning after adding 1 gallon of Walmart 8% chlorine the night before. FC=1.5, CC=1.5, PH=7.4, TA=200, CH=375, CYA off the chart but it was 200+. At this point it is very clear to me that I need to drain the pool. This leads me to the title of this post. Does anyone know the legalities of asking for an exemption due to health concerns of the state of the pool water draining and adding 12000-14000 gallons of bad water to the city sewer and drawing the same in fresh water. I really hate to use my pool supply store as I feel they should have caught the CYA and TA levels. I am going to a different pool supply today to try and get some answers. Any suggestions on limiting the damage to the pool at this point?