Floating Swimming Pool to Help Clean New York River
A floating swimming pool shaped like a plus sign will appear in New York's East River this summer.
Called +Pool, the pool serves two purposes: to provide a free swimming facility to the public, and to help clean the river water.
A 185-square-meter version of +Pool will be tested on the East River this summer. And if all goes well, a full-size pool of over 880 square meters will open to the public in 2025.
+Pool has been a long time in the making.
A small team of designers first had the idea for a floating pool that could clean river water in 2010. They designed a pool with walls that act like a strainer, filtering out bacteria and pollutants.
A series of crowdfunding campaigns paid for the research and testing of the technology that proved +Pool was possible.
Now the +Pool project has received $4 million from New York City and $12 million from New York State to make the idea a reality.
New York's waterways have long had a reputation for being dirty. And although they're much cleaner than they used to be, they still aren't clean enough to swim in.
+Pool came from a simple idea: if just a small part was cleaned instead of trying to clean everything, New Yorkers could swim in their rivers.
When complete, the full-size pool will be able to clean over 3.7 million liters of water a day — without using chemicals.
The pool is designed so that everyone can use it, so there are actually four pools in one: one for kids, one for sports, one for swimming laps, and one for just relaxing.
+Pool will also be used to provide free swimming lessons to children and adults, as well as for environmental education programs.
If +Pool is a success, the team behind the project hopes to create several similar pools at different locations around the city.
