Saturday, August 5, 2006

Cox brave in dirty world: Swimmer takes on Ohio River

By Paul Daugherty, Enquirer Staff Writer

Lynne Cox swam 1.22 miles in 32-degree water off Antarctica, accompanied by three doctors, a boat crew, a defibrillator and dozens of penguins.  She swam 3 miles across the Bering Strait from Alaska to the Soviet Union when the water temperature was colder than U.S.-Soviet relations.

She set a speed record for swimming the English Channel.

She nearly died from dysentery after stroking 15 miles in the Nile River.

She swims in such extreme conditions, scientists study her, psychiatrists do, too.

None of it prepared her for what she faces today.

At about 5 this afternoon, Cox is going to swim across the Ohio River, from the Serpentine Wall to Newport.  Yuck and Godspeed.

The local chapter of Rivers Unlimited asked her to make this perilous trek, battling current, silt and tree limbs and dead cows and Lord knows what.  Local water quality people claim to have seen a house trailer float past in 1997, after one especially violent rain.  But that’s another story.

Rivers Unlimited and the local chapter of the Sierra Club are not pleased with a state agency’s proposal to lower water quality standards for the Ohio after heavy rains.  Downpours overwhelm sewer systems and before you know it, the river is rampant with bacteria we won’t discuss in polite company.  Environmental groups would argue standards should be enhanced, not relaxed.

The folks at the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) would suggest the Ohio is a glass of filtered water compared with what it was even 20 years ago, and that no amount of realistic standard-raising would make the river pristine after a big rain.

All of which make for OK discussion.  The bigger story is, “this woman wants to swim in that?”

“If it rains, I won’t,” Cox said the other day from California.

She’s training there for her next long-distance swim, in a location she declines to name.  At 49, Cox has made a career out of twin passions – swimming and then environment.  She trained two years for the Antarctic swim, which got her a book deal and an appearance on “60 Minutes II.”  That was five years ago.

She swam the English Channel at age 15.  She dodged debris there too: floating heads of lettuce.  “You’d be amazed at what we put in our waters,” Cox said.

Having personally witnessed a dearly departed bovine floating past Great American Ball Park, its legs sticking straight up like an overturned dinner table, I am no longer amazed.  But we digress.

This is one amazing woman.  She did the Bering Strait in 1987 to celebrate perestroika.  That was 2.7 miles in 37-degree water.  Scientists said it should have killed her.  The Nile swim came in the early 70’s.  While paddling past the Sphinx, Cox came in contact with untreated human waste.

She swam the Spree, the river that divided East and West Berlin, to mark the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.  It was loaded with chemicals.  “You’ll glow when you get out,” someone told her.

Cox says navigating Antarctica’s pristine waters was “like swimming through the sky.”  Penguins “started waddling across the glacier to swim with me.  They had no fear.  I felt like I was in a Disney cartoon”.

Just like the Ohio River.

“The thing I’d be scared about most is boat traffic,” says ORSANCO’s Peter Tennant.  Tennant says when the river is calm it is safe for swimming, as long as you don’t stick your head in it.  Exposing open wounds to the water isn’t a great idea, either.  “I tell people if you fall in, keep your mouth shut,” Tennant says.  “But we’re meeting safe criteria the vast majority of the time.  It doesn’t look as clean as it really is.  What you’re mostly seeing is dirt.”

Cox has never swum in the Ohio.  In fact, she’s never seen it.  “I suspect it’s full of silt,” she said.

It’s full of something.

She has been a research subject for scientists studying how the human body functions in cold water.  Might she contribute to research for what Tennant calls “the Ohio River crud?”  That’s an ailment marked by diarrhea, cramping and generally feeling like you wish you were a dead cow.

“I hope not,” Cox said.

Good luck lady. Watch out for those wayward trailers.

Copyright 2006, Enquirer.com