If you have ever stood at the Point and wondered whether jumping in would be a great idea or a terrible one, you are not alone. That exact question made the rounds this spring when a newly drafted Steeler asked, on live television, whether it was safe to swim in Pittsburgh’s rivers or eat the fish he hoped to catch. The reaction said plenty: surprise, a few laughs, and not much certainty.
Dan Bain, a member of the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory and an associate professor of geology and environmental science at the University of Pittsburgh, decided to give the question a real answer. His new article in The Conversation, “Should you swim in Pittsburgh’s rivers? A water researcher breaks down the answer,” is worth a read for anyone who lives, works, or paddles anywhere in the Upper Ohio River Basin.
A few things stood out to us.
The recovery is real
Bain points to a striking before and after. Roughly fifty years ago, a fish survey at the Braddock Locks on the Monongahela turned up a single fish. One. A similar count in 2010 found more than 23,000 fish across 32 species. That kind of rebound does not happen by accident, and it is a credit to decades of cleanup work across the region.
But “swimmable” is complicated
Healthy fish populations are not the same thing as water you would want to swim in. The sticking point, Bain explains, is sewage. The region inherited hundreds of combined sewer overflow points, and according to ALCOSAN, overflows can happen with as little as a tenth of an inch of rain. That makes rivers in the service area a poor bet for swimming for at least 48 hours after a storm.
Why this matters beyond Pittsburgh
The Allegheny and the Monongahela meet at the Point to form the Ohio, which means what happens in these three rivers flows downstream through our entire four-state basin. The questions Bain is working through are the same ones facing community watershed groups across Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland.
Know before you go
In the article, Bain points readers to the 3 Rivers Waterkeeper Swim Guide, a handy tool for tracking shifting bacterial risk at river access points around the region. 3RWK posts shareable summaries on social media after each round of sampling, so it is an easy one to bookmark before a warm weekend.
Give it a read. The next time someone asks whether they can swim in the rivers, you will have a better answer than a shrug.
