6 ms·

A +Pool in the East River

58 points by sschwartz 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago
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. Grzybowski sampled again, and the C.F.U. count in the river exceeded 24,196, the highest possible measurement. “Pretty much raw sewage,” he reported. The would-be swimmer felt a wave of compassion for the seahorses. ♦
- js2 12y ago
  Most of the time the water is safe for swimming. http://www.nycswim.org/About/FAQ.aspx#1 http://www.nycswim.org/About/FAQ.aspx#1
- ganeumann 12y ago
  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/ http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/cso/
austinhutch 12y ago
The +Pool has been one of my favorite projects to follow. When I think about the most compelling kickstarter marketing efforts, it always springs to mind. I'm always encouraged to hear about their progress. It's hard to believe just how filthy the East River is. :(
Zikes 12y ago
Off-topic, but why do traditional print companies always stubbornly insist on ignoring the fundamental differences between print and web media? All that text, and not a single link to the +Pool Kickstarter page. It doesn't even have to be in the article text itself, having it at the end would be just fine.
- FatalLogic 12y ago
  Agreed https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a-floating-pool-in-the-river-for-everyone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a-floati...
  - spott 12y ago
    The article says they raised $300k, but this kickstarter only says $50k. Any ideas where the discrepancy comes from?
    - Zikes 12y ago
      The Kickstarter ended in 2011, and their web site at http://www.pluspool.org/ http://www.pluspool.org/ has options to buy tiles. It looks like they've pursued other fundraising options after Kickstarter.
    - tnorthcutt 12y ago
      That was the first kickstarter; they then ran a second one for the next phase of the project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-tile https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-...
  - Echo117 12y ago
    That was the first Kickstarter. The most recent one (and the one described in the story regarding $300k raised, etc.), is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-tile https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-...
oh_sigh 12y ago
Why not just fill it with fresh, chlorinated water? This project is never going to happen without chlorination.
- rmxt 12y ago
  The NYC Dept. of Parks has already done that (and with free admission!) [1], so perhaps the novelty has worn off. [1] http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/barrettopointpark/facilities/outdoor-pools/floating-pool http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/barrettopointpark/facilitie...
- joezydeco 12y ago
  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 it's not.
  - cowsandmilk 12y ago
    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.
    - joezydeco 12y ago
      http://dashboard.pluspool.org/ http://dashboard.pluspool.org/
- katbyte 12y ago
  because its not just a floating pool, its a pool that uses the actual water of the east river and filtration.
- readerrrr 12y ago
rsync 12y ago
This exists already in Zurich. Sort of. There is a river (a very clean river, of course) that flows through Zurich, and there is a 200 foot or so length of the river that is buoyed/strung off to form a decent sized "pool". You go downstream, jump in, and swim upstream. You're swimming in the actual river, just inside a marked off area with a nice deck on one side. It's really quite well done. Here it is: http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-pool http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-poo...
- SeoxyS 12y ago
  In Bern, there's a "pool" I used to love going to. It's got normal pools, but there's also the opportunity to jump into the river, where the currents will easily carry you half a mile in no time. http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river-swim/marzili http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river-swim/m... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE
spodek 12y ago
Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  Sublime. http://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Photo17_8A.jpg http://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Photo17_8...
- peter_l_downs 12y ago
  That's awesome, and so are the photographs!
- nmjohn 12y ago
  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.
- unoti 12y ago
  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.
- justinpaulson 12y ago
munificent 12y ago
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?
- thinkalone 12y ago
  Their intention is for the pool to act as a filter to clean NYC's waterways[1]. Research into effective water filters could be worthwhile, but the floating pool seems to overshadow that aspect. [1]: http://www.pluspool.org/about/ http://www.pluspool.org/about/
kimonos 12y ago
Not so interesting as I expected it to be..
brandonmenc 12y ago
"Technically, Norfolk has more gross tonnage."
0x006A 12y ago
Berlin has a floating pool build from an old ship. https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch
sireat 12y ago
Actually, I know that a similar idea has been used before in late 19th century, earlier in the 20th century, except it was much cruder. Basically a section of the river was marked off by nets and people could swim in them. I know some resorts still use a similar method, but again the filtering is only for very large particles. The hard part is the filtering. Developing an effective filtering method for such a large body of water would be an impressive achievement.

58 points by sschwartz 12y ago

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. Grzybowski sampled again, and the C.F.U. count in the river exceeded 24,196, the highest possible measurement. “Pretty much raw sewage,” he reported. The would-be swimmer felt a wave of compassion for the seahorses. ♦

js2 12y ago
Most of the time the water is safe for swimming. http://www.nycswim.org/About/FAQ.aspx#1 http://www.nycswim.org/About/FAQ.aspx#1
ganeumann 12y ago
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/ http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/npdes/cso/

austinhutch 12y ago

The +Pool has been one of my favorite projects to follow. When I think about the most compelling kickstarter marketing efforts, it always springs to mind. I'm always encouraged to hear about their progress. It's hard to believe just how filthy the East River is. :(

Zikes 12y ago

Off-topic, but why do traditional print companies always stubbornly insist on ignoring the fundamental differences between print and web media? All that text, and not a single link to the +Pool Kickstarter page. It doesn't even have to be in the article text itself, having it at the end would be just fine.

FatalLogic 12y ago
Agreed https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a-floating-pool-in-the-river-for-everyone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-a-floati...
- spott 12y ago
  The article says they raised $300k, but this kickstarter only says $50k. Any ideas where the discrepancy comes from?
  - Zikes 12y ago
    The Kickstarter ended in 2011, and their web site at http://www.pluspool.org/ http://www.pluspool.org/ has options to buy tiles. It looks like they've pursued other fundraising options after Kickstarter.
  - tnorthcutt 12y ago
    That was the first kickstarter; they then ran a second one for the next phase of the project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-tile https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-...
- Echo117 12y ago
  That was the first Kickstarter. The most recent one (and the one described in the story regarding $300k raised, etc.), is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-tile https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-...

oh_sigh 12y ago

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

rmxt 12y ago
The NYC Dept. of Parks has already done that (and with free admission!) [1], so perhaps the novelty has worn off. [1] http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/barrettopointpark/facilities/outdoor-pools/floating-pool http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/barrettopointpark/facilitie...
joezydeco 12y ago
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 it's not.
- cowsandmilk 12y ago
  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.
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    http://dashboard.pluspool.org/ http://dashboard.pluspool.org/
katbyte 12y ago
because its not just a floating pool, its a pool that uses the actual water of the east river and filtration.
readerrrr 12y ago

rsync 12y ago

This exists already in Zurich. Sort of. There is a river (a very clean river, of course) that flows through Zurich, and there is a 200 foot or so length of the river that is buoyed/strung off to form a decent sized "pool". You go downstream, jump in, and swim upstream. You're swimming in the actual river, just inside a marked off area with a nice deck on one side. It's really quite well done. Here it is: http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-pool http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-poo...

SeoxyS 12y ago
In Bern, there's a "pool" I used to love going to. It's got normal pools, but there's also the opportunity to jump into the river, where the currents will easily carry you half a mile in no time. http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river-swim/marzili http://www.bern.com/en/activities/adventure-fun/river-swim/m... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1vmzjwJE

spodek 12y ago

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

Gravityloss 12y ago
Sublime. http://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Photo17_8A.jpg http://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Photo17_8...
peter_l_downs 12y ago
That's awesome, and so are the photographs!
nmjohn 12y ago
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.
unoti 12y ago
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.
justinpaulson 12y ago

munificent 12y ago

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?

thinkalone 12y ago
Their intention is for the pool to act as a filter to clean NYC's waterways[1]. Research into effective water filters could be worthwhile, but the floating pool seems to overshadow that aspect. [1]: http://www.pluspool.org/about/ http://www.pluspool.org/about/

kimonos 12y ago

Not so interesting as I expected it to be..

brandonmenc 12y ago

"Technically, Norfolk has more gross tonnage."

0x006A 12y ago

Berlin has a floating pool build from an old ship. https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch

sireat 12y ago

Actually, I know that a similar idea has been used before in late 19th century, earlier in the 20th century, except it was much cruder. Basically a section of the river was marked off by nets and people could swim in them. I know some resorts still use a similar method, but again the filtering is only for very large particles. The hard part is the filtering. Developing an effective filtering method for such a large body of water would be an impressive achievement.