Clean Enough?

The first weekend in August is many things in Cincinnati, the Ohio River Paddlefest is one of the star events. It will include over 2000 participants and looks to be one of the more enjoyable ways to use the dog days of summer. 

Paddlefest 2016 represents new event organizers, a new route from previous years and new experiences for the participants. In a Cincinnati Enquirer article an event organizer says this is an opportunity to demonstrate the Ohio River to be safer and cleaner than people believe. Being a hobbyist paddler this is exciting but also being environmentally conscious, the new event route gives me pause... 

The new route on the Ohio River overlaps a century of unfinished business for the city of Cincinnati.  The new route matches closely with a concentration of sewer overflows locations that empty, unfiltered, into the Ohio River. Being an older system these overflows mix human waste water with rainwater runoff. The Cincinnati Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) website says that 11.5 billion (11,500,000,000) gallons of human waste contaminated rainwater overflows into the Ohio River each year.

“Every year, about 11.5 billion gallons of raw sewage - mixed with stormwater - overflows from MSD's combined sewer system into local streams and rivers and also backs up into homes and businesses...”

The amount of contaminated water is difficult to visualize...picture a wall of ‘poop’ contaminated water 50 foot high, 50 foot wide and 9 miles long.

If it is dry the event will likely go as planned but a surprise heavy rain could raise 'cleanliness' questions. Project Groundwork publishes a detailed interactive map of combined (sanitary + rain) sewer overflow locations (you will need to zoom in a bit to see the features).

A higher level map of where the combined overflow locations are found along the event route:

Overflow Locations (click to enlarge)

Being a working river the Ohio is under pollution stress from a number of factors that impact the cleanliness of the water, the MSD is one among many contributors.

I hope paddlefest is safe and fun for all participants. Showcasing a 'clean' Ohio River will depend more on good weather than the organization of the event.

The situation with the MSD is complicated and court orders are present requiring the system improve and modernize. It will be 2018 before the MSD has their plan ready to respond to the court orders to improve the combined sewer system. Cincinnati is a great city and can do better than this.