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A +Pool in the East River

newyorker.com

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Re: A +Pool in the East River

#21

Post by ganeumann »

rayiner wrote: post #2

Foul. Just foul. > But when it rains hard—a quarter of an inch in an hour might do the trick—some four hundred sewer pipes around the city begin flushing untreated waste, using the rivers as municipal lavatories. > For the statistically inclined, the figure to watch is the number of colony-forming units (of bacteria) per hundred millilitres. Beach advisories are often set at thirty-five. > The skies opened. Grzybowsk…

This is true of many riverfront municipalities. 771 cities in the US have combined sewer overflows [1]. My partner monitors the pollution level in the Hudson across from NYC (in Hoboken) and when it hasn't rained in a few days the water is clean enough to swim. But after a heavy rain, it is, indeed, foul.

That said, the Hudson is ridiculously cleaner than it was 20 years ago. So much so that the Marine Borer (a type of worm that eats wood) has made its return and is destroying the old piles that hold up parts of the landfill on the waterfront. Unintended consequences, but worth it.

[1] List here: http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/cso/

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#23

Post by cowsandmilk »

joezydeco wrote: post #12
oh_sigh wrote: post #6

Why not just fill it with fresh, chlorinated water? This project is never going to happen without chlorination.

Yeah, I'm confused. I'm assuming the NY Health Department will be the ones that certify the pool as usable by the public or not, right? So this whole dashboard mess is really useless: it's a binary decision. Is the pool safe or not? I mean yeah, if you want a nifty graphic screen showing how messed up the river is then go nuts. But I'd rather not know that the water is "kinda okay" for swimming. Either it's safe or i…

what is this dashboard you are referring to?

In most municipalities, all public pools require testing daily. One can assume they're just going to test daily before opening like all the other pools and use that decide whether to open.

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#24

Post by nmjohn »

spodek wrote: post #18

Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)

That was the best and most inspirational thing I've read in a long time. Absolutely worth the read!

> I’m about to go swim across the Hudson. I suppose there is a chance I’ll die. It wasn’t suicide if I did. I was loving life. Better to enjoy it fully than not live it how you want.

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#25

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

readerrrr wrote: post #19
oh_sigh wrote: post #6

Why not just fill it with fresh, chlorinated water? This project is never going to happen without chlorination.

Sure you can do that, for safety( and it is really easy ). But I think the larger goal here is to develop methods for filtration; it doesn't use electricity, machinery and uses local water. I think this is the best example of what a project on kickstarter is supposed to be.

You'd still need chlorine to keep the swimmers' bodies from fouling up the water, unless you're substantially refilling continuously.

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#26

Post by joezydeco »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #23
joezydeco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm confused. I'm assuming the NY Health Department will be the ones that certify the pool as usable by the public or not, right? So this whole dashboard mess is really useless: it's a binary decision. Is the pool safe or not? I mean yeah, if you want a nifty graphic screen showing how messed up the river is then go nuts. But I'd rather not know that the water is "kinda okay" for swimming. Either it's safe or i…

what is this dashboard you are referring to? In most municipalities, all public pools require testing daily. One can assume they're just going to test daily before opening like all the other pools and use that decide whether to open.

http://dashboard.pluspool.org/

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#27

Post by munificent »

Is it just me, or is this a completely stupid idea?

So you take a big pool and stick it in the middle of a dirty river. You need it to be full of water, so you filter a bunch of river water and fill it up. Then, for no good reason I can discern, you take that nicely filtered water and dump it right back into the river so that you can make room for more water that you then have to filter.

What is the value add of continuous filtration here?

Why not just filter one pool's worth of water, using whatever process you want, fill it up, and be done with it? What's so magical about "fresh" East River water, aside from the presence of all of the nasty shit you have to work super hard to remove?

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#28

Post by unoti »

spodek wrote: post #18

Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)

A really interesting story!

> It took about an hour of swimming.

> Not that the swim was “extreme,” but a lot of “extreme” things people do are actually planned and structured, which de-extremizes them. If you sky dive, for example, you’re doing exactly what someone planned for you. I don’t know of anyone who just decided to swim across the Hudson. Yet it’s easy. Anyone can do it anytime...

Requiring an hour of continuous swimming easily excludes most people, and makes it very dangerous. Swimming a mile is a big deal that requires a good deal of training. Something like 6 weeks of working on it continuously 3 days a week, with proper coaching. It's actually great workout goal. But just jumping in the water and doing it... it's pretty flabbergasting unless you had some idea of your long-distance swimming capabilities beforehand.

Considering the links at the end of the article, I'm guessing these are things you've considered quite in-depth-- even if it wasn't until you survived. Really fascinating stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Re: A +Pool in the East River

#30

Post by justinpaulson »

spodek wrote: post #18

Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)

The NYC Triathlon swim leg is in the Hudson as well.

This year's takes place Sunday: http://www.nyctri.com/

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