Off-topic, but why do traditional print companies always stubbornly insist on ignoring the fundamental differences between print and web media?<p>All that text, and not a single link to the +Pool Kickstarter page. It doesn't even have to be in the article text itself, having it at the end would be just fine.
Is it just me, or is this a completely stupid idea?<p>So you take a big pool and stick it in the middle of a dirty river. You need it to be full of water, so you filter a bunch of river water and fill it up. Then, for no good reason I can discern, you take that nicely filtered water and dump it right back into the river so that you can make room for more water that you then have to filter.<p>What is the value add of continuous filtration here?<p>Why not just filter one pool's worth of water, using whatever process you want, fill it up, and be done with it? What's so magical about "fresh" East River water, aside from the presence of all of the nasty shit you have to work super hard to remove?
Foul. Just foul.<p>> But when it rains hard—a quarter of an inch in an hour might do the trick—some four hundred sewer pipes around the city begin flushing untreated waste, using the rivers as municipal lavatories.<p>> For the statistically inclined, the figure to watch is the number of colony-forming units (of bacteria) per hundred millilitres. Beach advisories are often set at thirty-five.<p>> The skies opened. Grzybowski sampled again, and the C.F.U. count in the river exceeded 24,196, the highest possible measurement. “Pretty much raw sewage,” he reported. The would-be swimmer felt a wave of compassion for the seahorses. ♦
Some of us swam across the Hudson years ago -- <a href="http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river" rel="nofollow">http://joshuaspodek.com/saturday_morning_hudson_river</a> (with pictures from the disposable cameras we brought)
This exists already in Zurich. Sort of.<p>There is a river (a very clean river, of course) that flows through Zurich, and there is a 200 foot or so length of the river that is buoyed/strung off to form a decent sized "pool".<p>You go downstream, jump in, and swim upstream. You're swimming in the actual river, just inside a marked off area with a nice deck on one side. It's really quite well done.<p>Here it is:<p><a href="http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-pool" rel="nofollow">http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/sport/lower-letten-river-poo...</a>
The +Pool has been one of my favorite projects to follow. When I think about the most compelling kickstarter marketing efforts, it always springs to mind. I'm always encouraged to hear about their progress. It's hard to believe just how filthy the East River is. :(
Actually, I know that a similar idea has been used before in late 19th century, earlier in the 20th century, except it was much cruder. Basically a section of the river was marked off by nets and people could swim in them. I know some resorts still use a similar method, but again the filtering is only for very large particles.<p>The hard part is the filtering. Developing an effective filtering method for such a large body of water would be an impressive achievement.
Berlin has a floating pool build from an old ship. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=ARENA+BADESCHIFF&tbm=isch</a>