Hundreds of people plunged into the Chicago River’s chilly waters on Sunday as part of the first organized swim in the river for nearly 100 years, a previously unthinkable act in what was once one of the most befouled waterways in the world.
About 300 people, some wearing wetsuits, jumped into the Chicago River for a mile-long looping swim on an early, overcast midwest morning, a feat made possible by the often unseen but crucial progress the US has made in the past half century in cleaning its rivers of toxic pollution.
“It’s overwhelming to see this happen, it’s unbelievable to see swimmers swim past us now,” said Doug McConnell, the main organizer of the event.
McConnell, a Chicago area native and co-founder of A Long Swim, had been pushing the city’s leadership for more than a decade to allow a swim in the river, the first such event since 1927, having witnessed the blossoming urban river swimming movement take hold in cities such as Paris, Munich and Amsterdam.
“Seeing that really planted a seed, and we are thrilled we are finally doing this and that it has got global attention – we had applications across the US and 13 countries,” said McConnell, who hopes this will become an annual event and spread to other US cities.
McConnell didn’t leap into the water on Sunday but is an accomplished long-distance swimmer, having traversed the English Channel, which he recalls as “14 hours of getting slapped around”, and swam around the island of Manhattan, all in aid of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) fundraising.
“I think the water conditions will surprise people because it will be cleaner than they expect,” he said. “The psychology of so many Chicagoans was that the river is untouchable – this isn’t true and we are proving this today.
“My grandfather grew up in Chicago and I think what his reaction to all of this would be because the river had an absolutely toxic reputation then. It was repulsive, absolutely untouchable.”
The Chicago River has a long history of being meddled with. Each year it is dyed green for St Patrick’s Day and, infamously, in 2004 the tour bus of Dave Matthews Band released 800lbs (363kg) of human waste through a bridge grate that landed on top of a boat of mightily unfortunate sightseers traveling on the river.
Indeed, Chicago initially grew by treating its slow-moving river as an unfettered dumping area. Sewage and other waste was routinely funneled into the river, including carcasses and effluent from huge slaughterhouses that clustered beside the waterway – to the extent that a section of the river is still called “bubble creek” due to the gas given off by the rotting sludge on the riverbed.
The river became so foul, causing deadly outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, that the city took the extraordinary step in 1900 of reversing the river’s flow by creating a system of canals and locks, to avoid Chicago’s source of drinking water in Lake Michigan becoming poisoned. Today, the 156-mile (265km) river meanders from Lake Michigan through Chicago so its water ultimately empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
“We treated the river like it was part of the sewer system, which haunted us,” said Margaret Frisbie, the executive director of Friends of the Chicago River. Riverside buildings typically didn’t even have windows overlooking what was known as “the stinking river”, with the ribbon of water shunned as part of Chicago’s civic fabric.
“Until just a few years ago people would’ve thought it would be outrageous to jump into it,” Frisbie said. When Friends of the Chicago River formed in 1979 with a vision to restore the ecological function of a river that could be enjoyed by people and wildlife alike, “people thought we were crazy,” she said.
Yet the 1970s was a seminal decade for environmental protection in the US, with the passage of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – bringing new restrictions on pollution dumped into rivers, streams and lakes. Where once American rivers were so toxic they could catch fire, a new era had begun that would allow US cities to think more affectionately of their foundational waterways.
In Chicago, the slaughterhouses shut down, new sewage and storm water infrastructure was built and teams of volunteers, as they do to this day, toiled to clean up trash.
Dozens of species of fish returned, as did beavers and snapping turtles such as Chonkosaurus, an enormous, locally famous specimen sometimes seen lounging by the river.
In 2016, a riverside public pathway was completed to knit the downtown area to its adjacent water, allowing Chicagoans in new bars and restaurants to gaze upon a river that is no longer a fetid soup, a place clean enough that people can now swim in it. On 12 September, it was announced that Friends of the Chicago River won an international prize in recognition of the river’s transformation.
“So many people are on rental boats on the river these days – it’s heaving with people,” Frisbie said. “People want to work near the river, live near it, be on it. It’s remarkable to see people have that connection with it again.
“This swim is emblematic of all the work we’ve done over the past 50 years to improve our rivers. It shows you can change the destiny of any natural resource and do some good. It feels that’s something we need right now.”
America’s rivers may now increasingly be places of scenic recreation rather than industrial sacrifice zones, but this does depend on the vicissitudes of politics. The Trump administration is narrowing the application of the Clean Water Act, which helped ensure healthier rivers, and is similarly weakening rules on what coal plants and factories can dump in waterways. The bad old days may be a thing of the past, but ongoing progress isn’t guaranteed.
“If the federal government retreats from enforcement, things could slide backwards,” Frisbie said. “It’s incumbent on cities, countries and states to be vigilant. Our river is beloved now – people want to use it, wildlife needs it, we need it. We want to maintain that rather than see it roll back.”
On Sunday, though, few swimmers were mulling such weighty topics as they lined up in robes, serenaded by the skirl of the Chicago police department’s bagpipes and drum, before stripping and vaulting into the river, bobbling flotation devices tethered to their waists.
Organizers had zealously tested the water in the weeks before the event, finding that the river was consistently safe in terms of EPA standards on fecal coliform – essentially, poo in the water. The river was scanned, too, for any potential obstructions to the swimmers.
Among the participants for the first river swim in 98 years – all strictly vetted to ensure they could complete the course – was Olivia Smoliga, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs and went on to win a gold medal in backstroke at the 2016 Olympic games.
Open water swimming is a different beast to the lanes of a pool, but Smoliga’s competitive spirit compelled her to speed around the river loop, even though it was not intended to be a race.
“You have people throwing elbows there – you have to watch out for fingernail length, everything,” she said. “The fact they were able to clean up the river and do such great work, to have this full on race happen, is trippy. But it’s really cool.”
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