CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Chicago River made news recently for something it hadn’t done in nearly 100 years – host an open water swim.
Nearly 300 people braved the cold water to take part in a race in a river that was once considered an open sewer.
The dramatic gathering, which took more than a decade to arrange, came a little more than a year after last year’s Summer Olympics in Paris, when triathletes and marathon swimmers took to the Seine River during their competitions.
So, if swimming is safe in the once-fouled waterways of Chicago and Paris, how close might Cleveland be to hosting something similar on the Cuyahoga?
Not close at all, say those familiar with the river and its history, but that doesn’t mean the urban section near Downtown Cleveland couldn’t host a gaggle of churning arms and flapping feet one day.
And if somebody were to organize such an event, might it be the folks at Share the River, a nonprofit advocacy group led by Jim Ridge that has worked tirelessly to return recreation to the Cuyahoga?
The group’s annual Blazing Paddles event celebrates the kayakers and paddle-boarders that have come to share the river’s navigation channel with pleasure boats and giant freighters.
But swimmers? That’s a different story.
“I think it’s a fine thought,” Ridge said, and a nice visual. But he questions whether the water quality would be sufficient and if swimmers could co-exist with other traffic on the U.S. Coast Guard-regulated waterway.
The first question is probably best answered by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, charged with keeping sewage out of the river and Lake Erie. It’s more than halfway through a $3 billion effort to do just that.
There are times during dry weather where swimming in the river “would be considered safe from a bacteria standpoint,” said district spokeswoman Jenn Elting. But she said it is still not advisable because “there just might be a lot of other gunk in the water.”
That could include sediment, algae, other organic material, not to mention stormwater runoff.
Elting said the sewer district doesn’t monitor industrial pollutants in the water as closely as bacteria, so she wasn’t able to weigh in on the potential risks they might pose.
The Chicago River hosted an open swim on Sunday, Sept. 21.Chris Costoso
Chuck Beatty, event director of the annual Brogan Open Water Classic that features swim races in Lake Erie off Edgewater Beach, said holding an open swim in the Cuyahoga has crossed his mind on occasion, but is not something he plans to pursue.
“There’s a lot of places where you can pick up things that aren’t good for people,” he said, offering what he called his un-scientific opinion. And while bacteria levels may be acceptable at times, “you would have to get really lucky picking a day where the water quality is good.”
The Cuyahoga begins in Geauga County and flows south to Akron before turning north, riffling through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and then into deeper water in Cleveland. It flows past the city’s industrial and commercial Flats that are routinely dredged to allow for large ships to safely navigate the channel.
The river’s legacy of pollution is well-documented, but starting in the 1970s, conditions have steadily improved. It’s more than halfway toward being dropped as an Area of Concern by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
While the river is cleaner, Beatty said, it’s probably not to the point where it’s safe for someone to immerse themselves in the water for 45 minutes to an hour.
“My sense is we have some work to do still,” he said.
That’s also the sentiment of Ryan Ainger, river ranger at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where visitors sometimes wade into shallow sections of the Cuyahoga, something the park doesn’t restrict nor promote, but says can be dangerous given the depth and flow of the current.
Open water swimming downstream in the deeper navigation channel, which is not part of the park, raises several concerns beyond water quality, he said, including the presence of woody debris.
It’s one thing for a kayaker to roll over into the river, Ainger said, and another for a swimmer to be immersed for a long period of time.
That doesn’t mean an open swim isn’t doable down the road, he said, “just something that needs to be slowly rolled out in the interest of public health and safety.”
Help available
If Cleveland wanted to move in that direction there are places to turn for guidance. One is an international organization called Swimmable Cities, headed by an Australian environmental consultant named Matthew Sykes.
A number of signatories from the United States, Canada and Europe are part of the alliance, which promotes the health of urban waterways.
Sykes told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer on Tuesday that he was not familiar with the Cuyahoga or its environmental legacy. But on Wednesday, he had a chance meeting with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb at a conference in New York City of mayors from the U.S. and Canada. After their conversation, Sykes now intends to follow up with Sarah O’Keeffe, Cleveland’s director of sustainability and climate justice.
A Bibb spokesman characterized the encounter between the two men “an informal conversation,” during which Sykes discussed his organization.
“These conversations will continue as part of Mayor Bibb’s ongoing commitment to exploring various ideas to activate Cleveland’s waterways,” the spokesman stated in an email.
Sykes said it’s his belief that any river can become swimmable. It helps to set a goal that’s maybe five to ten years out, the way Paris did.
The mayor of London, England, for example, wants the Thames River to allow swimming by 2034, which means it would be safe from a water quality standpoint but also legally allowed and with accessible entry points.
The group’s hope is for 300 cities by 2030 to have started the journey toward being swimmable.
“So, we would love Cleveland to be part of that trajectory,” he said.
Chicago did it
One city that has already accomplished the feat is Chicago.
Doug McConnell, CEO of Chicago River Swim, said the idea came to him 13 years ago from Amsterdam where they swim in the canals. It took until now before something similar could be pulled off in Chicago.
The Chicago River was much like the Cuyahoga back in the day, he said, but the good news is that if you stop dumping junk into a river “it will clean itself.” Efforts by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District in Chicago have reduced the sewage discharge that had been contributing to the pollution.
The biggest challenge to pulling off Chicago’s recent open swim was fighting public perception, he said, “trying to get people just to get their heads around the fact that the water in the river could be clean enough to swim in.”
As event time approached, organizers used data from three different sources to ensure bacteria levels in the water were suitable for swimming, McConnell said. And concerns about legacy chemicals in the water were alleviated by the river’s depth – 17 to 20 feet – and the use of GPS-controlled buoys to mark the course.
The motorized buoys did not have to be anchored in the riverbed where they could have stirred up sediment and the chemicals buried in it, he said.
Now, McConnell said, the Chicago River Swim serves as an exclamation point to just how far the city has come in cleaning up its river.
“It’s a celebration and a victory lap,” he said. “And by God, cities like Cleveland and Chicago, we’ve got to take a victory lap.”
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