It’s Gonna Be Cool

Almost everyone who spoke at a mid-June Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) hearing on expanding public access to waters in New York City revealed that they had swum in them, illegally. Although a Hudson Riverkeeper representative cautioned that calls to reclassify the local waters for swimming and boating did not extend to stringent contamination testing, the broad opinion in the room was to speedily push past bureaucracy, lest we fall behind in the great urban arms race for fun. Two speakers had for a time lived in San Francisco and were enamored with the public swimming there. One man brought up the example of Paris, which is hard at work making the Seine swimmable in time for next summer’s Olympic Games. How could New York trail the French? the speaker wanted to know, particularly when we have game-changing swimming technology ready at hand.

Indeed, the hearing doubled as a publicity bonanza for Plus Pool, a well-funded bobbing lido that filters river water, allowing people to swim in it. No Plus Pools actually exist, despite the idea for one in the Ea…