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+Pool Would Let New Yorkers Go River Swimming 133

Posted by samzenpus from the now-90%-body-free dept.
cylonlover writes "Three young entrepreneurs have proposed a way of getting New Yorkers into the Hudson, East and/or Bronx Rivers. It's called the +Pool (Plus Pool) — a public swimming pool that would float in the river, allowing people to swim in filtered river water. River water would flow into the pool through permeable walls, which would be composed of three layers filtering out the river nasties."
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+Pool Would Let New Yorkers Go River Swimming More

+Pool Would Let New Yorkers Go River Swimming

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  • Three layers are not enough... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24, 2011 @09:45AM (#36555616)

    ...to filter out the New Yorkers.

    Still too nasty for me.

  • Eh? (Score:2)

    by dtmos ( 447842 ) *

    The rivers smell so bad, I'd think the biggest problem would be convincing people to get near them, let alone in them. I think they'd have to be enclosed.

    Unmentioned in the article is that one also needs the conventional cleaning system to clean the water from (speaking carefully now) pollutants generated internally, too.

    What happens in winter?

    • What happens in winter?

      It gets cold. Not a lot of outdoor swimming pools in use in a New York winter.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arlet ( 29997 )

      To keep the inside water clean, I suppose you could just pump the water out of the pool, back into the river.

    • Re:Eh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday June 24, 2011 @09:52AM (#36555764) Homepage Journal

      What happens in winter?

      My wife's Scandanavian ancestors came up with an answer to that. You beat each other with birch twigs in the sauna until jumping through a hole in the ice into freezing water begins to look like an attractive proposition. Once disabused of that insane notion, you crawl out and do it again.

      I think the beating part would go over big with some elements of the New York population.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alta ( 1263 )

      Ice skating

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Hudson and East Rivers don't smell much at all these days and many fish have returned. The filtering is practically unnecessary except after heavy rains. It's more or less the same water as Orchard Beach or Coney Island, which obviously have no filters and no one gets sick from those.

    • That's interesting because the New York City Triathlon's swim portion is right in the Hudson River. No one I've talked to has ever mentioned anything TOO bad about swimming in the Hudson. But as a lot, triathletes are generally too hard core to admit any suffering or unexplained skin growths. :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jira ( 451936 )

      It should be promoted as Swimming in Organic Water.
      That would attract thousands

  • They're called "ocean swimming pools", and have been around for over a hundred years now. Help yourself to a google image search and enjoy the beautiful images.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      I feel I must recommend that people stop looking before they get to page 4...

      I can say no more without risking subjecting myself to a defamation lawsuit.

  • OR.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They could use these magical three layers to filter farther upstream where likely several inconsiderate companies are flushing nasties into the river and make those companies pay for it. THEN people could swim in the river like they should be able to. Letting people put nasties into the river is the problem. Duh.

    • "nasties" in the river, huh?

    • Magic solves everyone's problems. In this case the first layer (sediment filtration) is probably the only feasible layer on any scale. If the other two would even be possible the cost would grow exponentially, leaving you a pool costing more than a space shuttle.

    • They could use these magical three layers to filter farther upstream where likely several inconsiderate companies are flushing nasties into the river and make those companies pay for it. THEN people could swim in the river like they should be able to. Letting people put nasties into the river is the problem. Duh.

      Good luck with that. Most of the ecological damage to the east river (including one of the largest and longest in duration oil spills in history) was done a long time ago by companies that no longer exist. Putting something up river would be ineffective as the riverbed has been contaminated in all directions for over a century.

      Still, it's New York. If you care about whether or not something is clean, it's not where you live. The whole fucking city smells like rotting garbage and urine in the summer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by s73v3r ( 963317 )

      I'd say just close down those companies. If they can't play nice, they don't deserve to be in business at all.

  • Ah, now I understand (Score:5, Funny)

    by Megahard ( 1053072 ) on Friday June 24, 2011 @09:53AM (#36555780)
    How those Jersey Shore people get their orange "tans".
  • I thought US Airways already tried to do this with an old Airbus A-320 back in '09 [msn.com]? It wasn't quite as popular back then because it was January and frigid,. . .

  • ...and what exactly is the point? To separate the rich hedonists from a little more of their disposable income? I sure don't see those of us commoners being able to take "advantage" of such a ridiculous luxury.

    • By separating the rich hedonists from their money you can then employ waiters, pool cleaners, construction people, and pool designers plus hundreds of useless people in government to get the required permits.

      So yes, that is the point. To get people to spend money.

      Now of course we're both assuming that this will be a private pool and privately funded. What will really happen is that someone will make it a public project and build this instead of hiring a few more cops, repairing roads, or performing some oth

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        We don't need more cops, if anything we need less. They have enough of them to bother people committing victimless crimes, or minor traffic violations.

  • Nice Slashvertisement.

    Maintenance costs would kill this thing quickly, as would the passage of chemicals the filters failed to catch. Cleaning the inside of a pool sucks, but cleaning BOTH sides? Lovely.

  • Eh... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday June 24, 2011 @09:58AM (#36555876) Journal
    In the narrow sense, this seems like a reasonably clever, if not entirely novel solution; but in the broader sense it leaves me skeptical.

    If your river has sufficiently high levels of pathogenic viruses and bacteria that it isn't swimmable, you should seriously consider pretending to be a first-world country for 15 minutes and check out this cool "sanitation systems, so you don't have to drink and swim in your own shit!" fad that all the cool civil engineers have been nattering on about since, oh, the Roman Empire or so...

    If your river has sufficiently high levels of chemical nasties and heavy metals that it isn't swimmable, trusting a pool filter to remove them probably isn't the best idea, and maybe you should be doing something about the 'chemical plants upstream of major population centers' problem. Isn't that stuff supposed to be in New Jersey, anyway?

    If your swimmers just can't handle the terror of a little silt or the normal flora of a watershed ecosystem, maybe they need a psych referral, not a pool filter.

    • If your river has sufficiently high levels of chemical nasties and heavy metals that it isn't swimmable, trusting a pool filter to remove them probably isn't the best idea, and maybe you should be doing something about the 'chemical plants upstream of major population centers' problem. Isn't that stuff supposed to be in New Jersey, anyway?

      NYC is at the mouth of the Hudson. Everything on the river is upstream of it Moving NYC to the source is an idea, but I don't think it's going to go over well. The Hu

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by phayes ( 202222 )

      Even though the first world has cleaned up immensely over the past 50-70 years I have major doubts of there being a safely swimmable river flowing through ANY major city, first world or not. Being on the shore of a major lake or by the ocean doesn't count and cleanup takes multiple decades before levels of toxic chemicals fall enough to become safe again. Even with advanced sewage treatment all it takes is a rainstorm for the coastal waters to be off limits for a week or so.

      I think you need to suffer the co

      • Oh, I've taken more than a few unprotected impromptu-post-capsize swims in the dubiously swimmable waters of a river flowing through a major city... I did try to keep my mouth shut during the process, of course...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by phayes ( 202222 )

          I've been dunked in Hudson, Niagra, St Laurent, Mississippi, Ohio, Thames & Seine without a problem but I've seen also seen people develop nasty skin rashes after swimming in waters that were nominally safe.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by phayes ( 202222 )

          Zurich, Geneva, Toronto, Chicago or even Detroit don't make the cut as they are either directly on a lake or the river is directly fed from one. In Zurich's case it's called "Lake Zurich". Find a major city on a river that suffered heavy industrial polution during the early 20th century that has brought the river back to a consistently safe to swim state. There may be a few exceptions but either their rivers were never heavily polluted or they've done a herculean task over decades.

    • In the narrow sense, this seems like a reasonably clever, if not entirely novel solution; but in the broader sense it leaves me skeptical.

      It's about New York City, you're supposed to be skeptical. At the very least.

      If your river has sufficiently high levels of pathogenic viruses and bacteria that it isn't swimmable, you should seriously consider pretending to be a first-world country for 15 minutes and check out this cool "sanitation systems, so you don't have to drink and swim in your own shit!" fad that all the cool civil engineers have been nattering on about since, oh, the Roman Empire or so...

      The Romans never had to deal with Wall Street. That's an enormous amount of shit.

      If your river has sufficiently high levels of chemical nasties and heavy metals that it isn't swimmable, trusting a pool filter to remove them probably isn't the best idea, and maybe you should be doing something about the 'chemical plants upstream of major population centers' problem. Isn't that stuff supposed to be in New Jersey, anyway?

      What russotto said. Nuking the petrochemical plant that is New Jersey would likely be a good idea. Maybe we can trade Moscow with the Russians.

      If your swimmers just can't handle the terror of a little silt or the normal flora of a watershed ecosystem, maybe they need a psych referral, not a pool filter.

      Again. We're talking about New York. The entire city IS a psych referral. Gone Bad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )

      About 5 miles of New Jersey riverbank is due north of Manhattan. Very little of it even developed, much less into a toxic wellspring.

      And behind that is some of the best parts of Joizey, if Zillow is to be believed.

  • I've been seeing this same copy and image set for nearly two years now, here and there online. Will this just keep getting rehashed until it gets the funding/approvals that it needs?
  • If the pool IS the filter, how would you go about cleaning/changing the filters so they filter properly? Change the entire pool out? I can't think of any other way to do it. It's just like my reverse-osmosis water system. The filters clog, and need replacing or cleaning. There's no way to do that here.

  • The "East River" is what people outside of New York City like to call the Atlantic Ocean.

    You can already go swimming in it, but as I understand it the idea here is to let you swim in the ocean without worrying about jellyfish, the tide pulling you out to sea, or the occasional shark frightening you.

    You can also go swimming in the Hudson which is an actual river. There it is best to stay within the designated swimming areas mostly because it's relatively easy to get washed out to sea.

    • Since when are New Yorkers worried about sharks and jellyfish? It's the other way around.

      Have you seen the tentacles on those things coming out of the buildings? Way scary.

  • Yeah yeah, it's a radical idea. But maybe if you didn't dump so much crap in the the East River, it wouldn't be hazardous to swim in.

  • Seems like that would be an even better idea. But what do I know?
    • It is a better idea, only so much containment and junk has settled down into the sludge at the bottom of the rivers that the only way to get it out would be dredging the river (they've been dredging the Hudson for years). Problem is that dredging churns up so much of the contaminants that they are trying to remove, it almost isn't worth it.

  • Safe to assume... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MoldySpore ( 1280634 ) on Friday June 24, 2011 @10:34AM (#36556692)

    ...it filters out hypodermic needles?

    On a more serious note, last time I docked my boat at a marina in NYC (on my way to the long island sound), not only was the water disgustingly dirty, but the smell was overbearing. The rest of my family stayed in a hotel the rest of the night while I roughed it out on the boat to keep an eye on things. In the morning, a garbage truck showed up to empty some of the large garbage bins out. When they lifted it up with the truck, the liquid sludge in the bottom of the bin started to leak out the bottom. They then drove it over to the edge, and let it empty into the river. I have never smelled a worse smell in my entire life.

    I love NYC and NY in general. But swimming in the water down there? No thanks.

  • Maybe this is a dumb question, but what about something like the pool plus, except not in the river? I mean the swimming pool is an old idea, what the point of putting it in a river? Why not put it next to the river, treat the water river water with chlorine, put it in the pool, and dump the old water back into the river or just down the sewer?

  • Obligatory... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    KRAMER: Well my swimming pool problems are solved. I just found myself miles and miles of open lanes.

    JERRY: What is that smell?

    KRAMER: That's East River.

    JERRY: You're swimming in the East River? The most heavily trafficked overly contaminated waterway on the eastern seaboard?

    KRAMER: Technically Norfolk has more gross tonnage.

    JERRY: How could you swim in that water?

    KRAMER: I saw a couple of other guys out there.

    JERRY: Swimming?

    KRAMER: Floating, they weren't moving much. But they were out there.

  • Or they could just swim in the river like normal people. People swim in the hudson all the time, and it is a busy river for recreational boating. Absolutely nothing wrong with that water. City folk and other yuppie snobs like those who can afford or would want to live in the city see anything but clear water as dirty. News flash: Most rivers are murky and do not have great clarity, especially tidal rivers that are dredged for big shipping traffic.
    • Actually, the parts of the Hudson above NYC are fine. That water is clean when compared to the water that sits in the small bays and accumulates around the mouth to the long island sound. I grew up swimming in the Hudson up by Poughkeepsie and Kingston. It is fine up there. But down in the East River and that area? You would never get in that water. And if you do, I wouldn't want to be near you after you did ;)
  • It would never work. You can take the river water out of New York, but you just can't get the New York out of the river.

  • ...one of the most sad an pathetic stories I've read this week. The idea is genius, but the need for it is an indictment.

  • All the 1337 kids (Score:3)

    by sean.peters ( 568334 ) on Friday June 24, 2011 @02:55PM (#36559400) Homepage
    ... are using Pool++

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