Clean-water advocate takes Earth Day swim at Gowanus Canal Superfund site
A clean-water advocate took an Earth Day swim in the polluted Gowanus Canal, a federal Superfund site.
“I’m going in!” yelled Christopher Swain, wearing a yellow-and-black protective suit and a green swim cap as he crossed a railing into the water near a sewage discharge point in Brooklyn, where a sign warns people to stay out of the water.
He was accompanied Wednesday by a woman in a kayak, paddling a few feet away from him.
“It’s not safe to swim in here,” he said afterward, stating the obvious. The canal water “tasted like mud, poop, ground-up grass, detergent, gasoline.”