In New York city, there is a extremely surprising and and impressive views of floating East River pool in the city’s East River after the proposal was partially crowdfunded and eventually approved by the city.
The pool’s filtration system, which is expected to clean more than a million gallons of river water daily without the use of chemicals or additives, per a project press release, will undergo two rounds of testing. The first will begin this month on a floating barge in the waters close to Pier 35; next year, a portion of the open-air pool will be built to carry out the final tests. The city of more than 8.3 million people only maintains around 50 public pools deep enough to swim in, according to New York City Council data from 2022, creating long lines during summers amid longer and more intense heat waves.
Maintaining community ’s interest.
The pool was the first civic architecture proposal to launch through Kickstarter, according to the project, which raised over $300,000 through the crowdfunding site between 2011 and 2014 to fund testing. An early estimate in 2011 put the total cost of the project at $21 million, though Kara Meyer, managing director of Friends of + POOL, told CNN over email that this figure has since increased to around $50 million, with a more detailed cost estimate still to come.
“One of the most beautiful things about this project is that it has truly been community-driven,” Meyer said. “We kickstarted the project with thousands of small donations and the nonprofit continues to raise small-level funds from a vast array of community members that want access to their rivers and believe in the work we are doing around water safety education and water stewardship. Meyer added that four of the nonprofit’s 10 board members “identify as women and people of color,” and pointed to the organization’s community partnerships, including free swim lessons for local schoolchildren and workforce programs for residents, who she said will be trained for roles in lifeguarding, filtration system maintenance and water-quality testing, among others.
“Considering the horrific history of racial discrimination that has impacted America’s public pools, our commitment to accountability to the community and providing access where it’s lacking guides all of our decisions with the communities we serve,” she said.
Though New Yorkers should see the pool taking shape off of Pier 35 as testing finishes up next year, an exact timeline for its completion is yet to be announced. By helping filter a historically polluted river, organizers hope the project will offer “new frameworks” for the city to make use of its rivers in creative ways.