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 East River being around for a decade or so. Three representatives from the organization spoke about why that should change, prompting Community Board 1 member Wendy Chapman to also urge the DEC to build one. “It’s gonna be cool,” she said, assuring the room that “it’ll be like the High Line.” Fleur Sohtz, of Plus Pool, gave stirring testimony about how much she already swims in the city’s waterways. The room nodded in approval.

Those who hogged the mic studiously avoided safety issues or and any mention of lifeguards. The idea was simply to be able to swim in the river, which, when repeated over and over, began to sound more like a child’s fantasy than a real Idea In Which The City Should Invest. As such, the Plus Pool seems exactly in line with Eric Adams’s bizarre brand of whimsy. A filtered pool in the middle of the East River is a community project that exists in no community at all. (By offering a spectacle in the middle of nowhere, it’s actually anticommunity.) Accessibility appears to be an afterthought—imagine taking the subway to the end of the line then walking to the water’s edge and queuing up forever all for a momentary dip. Ultimately, Plus Pool is a project for people who want to live somewhere else entirely. Give sea rise a few more years, and they’ll get their wish.