Fort Wayne is home to three rivers, the Saint Mary’s, Saint Joseph, and the Maumee. But there’s a reason these rivers are not recommended to be swam in, and it’s not just because of strong currents.
Many rivers contain high levels of trash pollution, chemical pollution, but also most dangerously common, sewage. This sewage can cause an extremely high build up of bacteria, most commonly E. Coli. For Fort Wayne, these rivers are not recommended to swim, bacteria being the main reason why. Sewage can get into rivers a variety of ways, things like heavy rain can flood sewage systems, causing it to overflow and travel into rivers.
So are clean rivers unattainable?
Fort Wayne has created what’s called the “Clean River Team”. This team’s main job is to keep rivers clean especially through their work to prevent sewer backup. Sewer backup is an important issue because that is the main cause of overflow.
They have a few different ways of doing this, and they describe how the City of Fort Wayne’s City Utilities department describes these ways.
Line flushing is the process of putting high pressure water into the sewer line with the hopes of cleaning them out. Degreasing is the second one, and is very similar to Line flushing as it involves high pressure water in these sewer lines, but this one is used specifically on the walls of the lines to remove grease. The last major way is root removal, which is the process of removing tree roots grown in these pipes that can sometimes block flow.
Although Fort Wayne has a lot of funding for maintaining Fort Wayne’s rivers, a lot of these river issues can be blamed on climate change.
Lowering and Rising River Levels
River levels are lowering in some areas due to decreases in rainfall, this decrease in rainfall is one of the many effects of climate change and global warming. Lower river levels harm rivers because there is less water to dilute the pollutants in the water. Giving these rivers higher concentrations of harmful pathogens such as sewage.
Reversely, rising river levels can affect the quality of rivers by pushing these pathogens upstream and spreading these harmful pollutants throughout the rivers.
Overpopulation
As the Earth continues to become more and more populated, there is more sewage that needs to be taken care of. Higher levels of sewage are harder to maintain and dispose of, making it more of a possibility for this sewage to spill out into the rivers.
The higher population also causes a higher amount of trash pollution that can blow and/or spill into rivers.
Harmful Agricultural Tactics
With more of a demand for food as the population grows, farmers have resorted to using harmful pesticides. As these pesticides are used on lands near rivers, these pesticides (similar to sewage) can runoff into rivers, further poisoning the river quality.
Overgrazing is also an issue where livestock are being allowed to graze at an extent to where the high amount of overgrazing can push harmful organic matter into rivers.
Many wonder if these pollutants are actually strong enough to harm humans, well, just this year a perfect example of the effects of these pollutants was exhibited to the world.
In the 2024 Paris Olympics, some of the swimming events took place in the Paris river, the Seine. Before the Olympics, the French President ensured that the Seine river was safe to swim in, yet still not calming some environmentalists’ concerns.
According to Tortoise Media a total of eight Olympians got sick almost immediately after the swimming events. The common illness being E. Coli.
This event indicates that it is very important not to underestimate the effects of swimming in unclean rivers, especially as climate change continues to get worse. And although Fort Wayne has a Clean River Team after the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it must be recognized that these rivers are still not safe and they may never be safe unless steps are made to stop climate change.
