Swimmer's mission: Clean river

By Dan Hassert
Post staff reporter

Lynne Cox battled sharks while swimming off the Cape of Good Hope, fended off animal carcasses in the Nile and endured brain-chilling water in the Bering Strait.

But the prospect of swimming the Ohio River makes Cox, the California resident who is probably the world's most famous open-water swimmer, a bit nervous.

She's heard stories about the Ohio and wonders about its cleanliness, having no desire to catch dysentery again.

"I got so sick I almost died. It was no joke at all," Cox said about her swim in the Nile.

But Cox is determined to make a point: Taken care of, our rivers are important for recreation and tourism.

In the middle of a tour to tout her books "Swimming to Antarctica" and "Grayson" - about swimming with a baby gray whale - Cox has been invited by two environmental groups, Rivers Unlimited and the Sierra Club, to help build opposition to a proposal to lower pollution standards in the river after heavy rains.

On Saturday afternoon, Cox will give a speech at the Serpentine Wall at Sawyer Point downtown, then join with four local swimmers in an aquatic trip to the Kentucky shore and back.

"We're staking our claim on the water as citizens who enjoy the river for recreational opportunities," said Nate Holscher, project coordinator for Rivers Unlimited. "Obviously, the river is used to haul goods and (drain) our sewage, but it's more than that."

The event is part of a yearlong debate over proposals by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission to suspend bacterial standards in the river for two days after heavy rains. ORSANCO, the eight-state commission set up to improve water quality in the 981-mile-long Ohio, says it's motivated by the desire to make the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

The standards are frequently violated because of two factors: Heavy rain overwhelms the region's sanitary sewer systems, causing them to overflow into the river, and rain washes animal feces off farms into streams and on to the river.

ORSANCO maintains that the standards are unreachable during those times, and that adhering to them in such situations is pointless anyway because few people are using the river for swimming, canoeing and skiing when the current is swollen by rain.

The so-called wet-weather controversy is the local version of one that's been going on nationally almost since the creation of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

To some extent, the outcome of the discussion locally could affect how the region carries out two agreements with the federal government that require $2.4 billion to be spent over the next couple of decades in sewer upgrades.

Critics like Holscher say ORSANCO's argument both downplays how often the river is used for recreation and negates the importance of the river's image.

"When you have sewage overflows during wet weather, it affects public perception year-round," Holscher said.

Earlier this year, ORSANCO's board gave preliminary approval to the seven recommendations written by its technical committee so that they could be sent out for formal public comment. That comment period ended May 31.

The agency was overwhelmed with negative responses to the proposals, so many that it will likely delay a plan for a formal vote in October, said Peter Tennant, deputy executive director of the agency.

"We got people pretty worked up," Tennant said. "We haven't seen this kind of response in anything we've ever done."

ORSANCO received 4,476 postcards, 855 letters and 1,838 e-mails addressing its wet-weather recommendations, he said. "Typically we get maybe 10."

Tennant said many of the responses mischaracterized what the agency is trying to do. But others raised legitimate questions about the research upon which the recommendations were based, he said.

For example, the federal Environmental Protection Agency studies that link bacteria counts and infectious diseases are based on beaches and lakes, not rivers, Tennant said. In addition, the 2 mph velocity at which the new standards would kick in was an arbitrary number geared toward swimmers, when the river is used mostly by boaters and jet-skiers, he said.

It's likely that the technical committee will decide in a teleconference call later this month to send the staff back for more research with the possibility of modifying the proposed changes, he said.

Cox, the author and swimmer, said she's horrified by the prospect of "going backward" on pollution standards in "sacred" waterways, whether it's in the Ohio River or her home state of California.

Publication date: 08-02-2006