Float Me A River

This month's EarthEasy newsletter points to an article about a river pool project for the Hudson. That's right, a pool INSIDE the river. Kinda cool, isn't it?

"Swimming in the Hudson River used to be followed by a trip to the hospital for a tetanus shot. Alan Zollner and his club think it’s time for swimmers to take the river back.

“The river is getting cleaner,” said the president of the River Pool at Beacon, a nonprofit project headed by the Beacon Sloop Club in Beacon, N.Y., 60 miles north of New York.

The project — a $100,000 floating circle of interconnected modular fiberglass and a webbed nylon bottom — allows water, light and fish to flow through the pool. A smaller prototype will be installed by June.

Though the water in many rivers is getting cleaner thanks to provisions such as the Clean Water Act, the bottom sediment is still quite toxic. Also, environmental groups worry about upsetting delicate ecosystems. Floating river pools solve both problems with a design that keeps swimmers away from that area and safe from sweeping currents."

Read the rest of the article here:
Aquatics International - A River Runs Through It