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Swimmable Cities

swimmablecities.org

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Re: Swimmable Cities

#181

Post by blang »

Seattle is swimmable. Lake Washington, Green Lake (both fresh water), and the Puget Sound (salt water) are swimmable in city limits. I swim in lake Washington 3 times a week May - October.

As in another comment here about Copenhagen, you cannot swim after hard rain because of how the sewer systems were designed. Seattle is famous for rain, but not the type of rain that will cause a spill over event often.

The county government also tests the water for bacteria and algae and reports the findings on their website and closures are signed at access points.

https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dnrp/nature-recreation/parks-...

Also while there is a lot of private ownership of water access, there are 9 city beaches and something called street ends, which are public right of ways if a street ends at water, I swim from these all the time.

https://www.streetends.org/about

Re: Swimmable Cities

#182

Post by ghaff »

Aeolun wrote: post #154
bounder wrote: post #100

This is a great initiative. It is weird if you think about it. Why are our waterways in many cities so polluted and dangerous that you can't use them safely as a human(or any animal)? We should take more care about making the environment we live in safe and accessible for everyone. Amsterdam (and many other cities in the Netherlands) have swimmable parts. I'm coming from Groningen myself and there the government made…

I don’t think that as a child in the Netherlands I ever contemplated that water might be dangerous for any reason other than drowning. It’s bizarre to hear that it’s true in any first world nation.

Beaches in Massachusetts in the US were closed a number of times this summer because of algae blooms and other reasons.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#183

Post by ghaff »

cthalupa wrote: post #112
omnimus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for some reason USA has quite big percentage of people who cant swim. Compared to some countries where its part of mandatory education and thus the % is much lower.

~80% of the US claims to be able to swim, though I've found some sources that say only ~60% have the "five basic swimming skills," but they don't seem to provide any details around how they determined that vs. the people self reporting the ability to swim. I'm not even finding consistent details on what the 5 skills even are, though being able to get into the water, float, tread water, perform some sort of basic swim…

I don't remember the details of basic swimming tests but that sounds about right. The bottom line is that if you end up in the water within sight of shore under normal conditions you shouldn't panic or drown. I can easily believe 60-80% depending on the criteria. I haven't swum regularly for years and was never a real distance swimmer but I can swim by any reasonable measure.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#184

Post by elric »

seszett wrote: post #152
elric wrote: post #78

In Belgium, we don't even have swimmable pools. There are too few of them, their opening hours are worthless, going for a swim is stupidly expensive (~8eur), and many pools now require that you show them ID before you're allowed to enter. In all, it's become extremely unpleasant. The results are as depressing as expected: more drownings (especially in the north sea) every year, and kids can barely stay afloat anymore…

Same experience as the sibling, here in Antwerp. The swimming pool I sometimes go to is 4 euros (2 euros for people less than 25) and for 5 euros there's an open air heated swimming pool on Linkeroever. Also this summer one could swim in the Bonaparte dock, in the old harbour in the city center. I suck at swimming though, although I grew up on the Atlantic coast right next to the sea and bathed daily each summer. So…

I'm not sure which pool you're using, but Wezenberg is 5eur for adults, or 7.50 if you don't live in Antwerp. The cheaper pools (e.g. Plantin or Groenenhoek) are 4 or 6eur, and their opening hours are ridiculous (pretty much only open during office hours and a couple of hours during the weekend).

Many municipalities don't even have a pool anymore, which forces people to use the pool in the nearest city and pay the higher prices. Some schools have stopped swimming classes entirely because of a lack of pools.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#185

Post by tootie »

All things being equal having clean waterways is better than hsn dirty ones but this doesn't really seem like a priority. Plenty of cities just don't have the climate or geography to make this possible and plenty of people can't or don't swim. Arguably NYC is very swimmable since it's mostly on islands but the waterways are fairly rough and very wide and result it at least a few drownings every year.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#186

Post by jodrellblank »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #148
jodrellblank wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, they were. “In its evidence to the committee, the Environment Agency said that in 2021 the environmental performance of water companies was “at its lowest ever level” and the performance of most companies was declining.”” - https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/cleaning-up-failures-in-w... “Sewage spills in the UK hit a record high in 2023, amplifying public anger at the state of the country's dirty rivers and the…

That tells us nothing useful about the state of things 15+yrs ago. Only that 2023 was the worst. Could have been bad for 100yrs, just the worst in 2023.

It tells us enough to counter the low effort "even just cleaner 15 years ago? lol, they were not". If 2023 was the worst it had ever been, then they were cleaner at all points in the past. Q.E.D.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#187

Post by dgroshev »

ljf wrote: post #108

I used to regularly kayak in the River Thames (London, UK) - I didn't concentrate one day and forgot to keep the kayak always facing the current, and a small boat wake/wave knocked me over. I swallowed a little water while righting myself - as was burping a horrible metallic taste for days after - but I didn't get ill. Might have been helped that within an hour of falling in, I was at a friends 30th, and the alcohol…

I'm quite sure that's autosuggestion.

I was kayaking on the Thames too (up in Richmond/Teddington), but on marathon/sprint kayaks which are very narrow and unstable, so most people in the kayaking club (hundreds of people!) flipped pretty regularly. We also went to swim from the pontoon in the summer every weekend for years. I can't recall anyone experiencing a persistent metallic taste, and I'm only aware of a single case of food poisoning in the club over the five years I was an active member, and that could be anything.

I do remember seeing seals, fishes, eels, kingfishers, herons, and cormorants though. The Thames is a lovely river with bad reputation because of the silt that tides are constantly churning up, and the only problem left (sewer overflows during heavy rain) will be finally gone next year when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tideway_Tunnel goes operational.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#188

Post by bb88 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #169
Aeolun wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that as a child in the Netherlands I ever contemplated that water might be dangerous for any reason other than drowning. It’s bizarre to hear that it’s true in any first world nation.

Blue algae blooms will make you real sick though.

Yes, and we have blue algae alerts on ponds and lakes where I live. Kinda sucks when you go to a lake to swim for your family vacation and you can't because it's toxic.

Re: Swimmable Cities

#189

Post by contrarian1234 »

codetrotter wrote: post #103
contrarian1234 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So naive question.. but how can they ensure all the water upstream is clean? I guess in Copenhagen its water is coming from the Baltic so maybe it's less of a concern (short of container ships having issues near the city). But the Seine river flows through many communities before it reaches Paris. Many opportunities for actors to illegally dump things in the river and for all sorts of nasty runoff agricultural and ot…

> Continuous water testing at the city limits also sounds impractical Why? Surely a small team of a few people could have that as their job, and it would be completely worth it, to help keep all the people that want to swim safe. And like, aside from the manual testing of the water that this team would do once or twice per day probably, they could have a few different sensors to catch some of the most likely kinds of…

It's not technically impossible to continuously monitor a river, but as the neighboring comments shows, it's kinda of cutting edge stuff and basically nobody is doing it. It's also very much not cheap. Pinpointing where upstream someone dumped stuff in the middle of the night is virtually impossible

Re: Swimmable Cities

#190

Post by contrarian1234 »

lukezeitlin wrote: post #134
contrarian1234 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So naive question.. but how can they ensure all the water upstream is clean? I guess in Copenhagen its water is coming from the Baltic so maybe it's less of a concern (short of container ships having issues near the city). But the Seine river flows through many communities before it reaches Paris. Many opportunities for actors to illegally dump things in the river and for all sorts of nasty runoff agricultural and ot…

Advances in remote sensing are making continuous water quality monitoring much easier. At our company we use a combination of satellite imagery and in situ optical sensors to monitor rivers and reservoirs. As well as a general water quality index, we can estimate concentrations of harmful nutrients, chlorophyll-a, phycocyanin, suspended matter, dissolved organic carbon to name a few. A further advantage of satellite…

multiple daily satellite images of the whole length of a river... I know you can purchase these kinds of satellite products, but as I understand it - it's incredibly expensive. Doing that all year round seems cost prohibitive
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