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Chris Swain: It tastes like mud, poop, sand, detergent, oil, gas, and then that taste in your mouth after you have a green drink. Not good. It's really cloudy, and about 50 degrees. I can feel it on my gloves and boots. To decontaminate, I'll be getting hosed down, and dumping a bucket of bleach on my head. I washed my mouth out with hydrogen peroxide along the route.
What was this canal's water like, compared to the Hudson and Charles rivers, which you've also swam in?"The weirdest thing about the water here is that you can feel the greasiness on your gloves."
The weirdest thing about the water here is that you can feel the greasiness on your gloves. And you can't see your own gloves in the water because there is so much goop. That happens—like when I swam in the Columbia River, the water is like that because it has so much rock dust in it. I'm used to that situation. But up by the Flushing Tunnel, you can see foam. That's not seafoam. That's foam from grease and fats that are in the storm drain, basically getting emulsified and foamed up when they're in here. At the bottom, you can feel the goop. "Black mayonnaise" really is an apt thing to call it. The Hudson River, you can feel the bottom, but it doesn't feel like that. It's like black whip cream.
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This is some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Right? And we're seeing pressure. Here's one way to think about it: The EPA is responsible for the mud, and the city is responsible for all the plumbing and all the runoff. For the city, I'd say, "You're doing great, but just keep going." Let's just make sure we redefine clean. Let's define the finish line, let's change the finish line to it being clean enough to swim every day. And there are three reasons for that. One, that's what we need. Two, there's actually a scientific standard for that. And three, that puts it on a human scale. Everyone understands what that means, even if they're in kindergarten, right?What's your ideal vision of the canal?
I think it'd have soft sides, no more bulkheads. Parks and riparian buffer zones; every development would be required to do it. Plant all of these roofs with rain gardens or vegetable or flower gardens—capture the rain. Fix all the plumbing issues around here, and map all of the ghost springs and streams that used to come in here. Daylight them. Right now, these springs are paved over, and they're connected to the sanitary sewer system. Disconnect them, and send them back into the canal where they used to be. You've got fresh, real clean water inputs. Every dead end street should have a street end park, and there should be incentives to include things like Whole Foods, which basically made a storm garden. They're catching the stormwater that's coming off the property.So in terms of getting this shit cleaned up, what's in the works right now?
The EPA is putting half a billion dollars from potentially liable companies and their successor companies. That money is going to getting rid of 600,000 cubic yards of muck from the canal by the mid 2020s. They're gonna do it in three sections, they're going to incinerate the sludge because there's so much coal tar residue that it's practically flammable. So it's gonna be a trash energy source. That'll be the muck. Then they're gonna cap what's left. Imagine a ten- to 20-foot layer, anywhere where you are, of sludge. Get that out. Then, cap it. There's probably stuff way down, but the sludge is gone now. The black mayonnaise is gone.Then it'll be like a normal riverbank, with rocks and sand that fish will like. The reason the water is so dirty, besides the stuff that's dumped in and bubbly, is the plumbing issues. More than half an inch of rain overwhelms the system, because storm water systems share the pipes in the sewer system—the sewer system can't handle it and so it vents to the nearest waterway. Well, this is the nearest waterway. So then you've got a problem.Chris Swain is going to try to swim the entire canal again at a later date.Follow John Surico on Twitter.