Yes, This Man Is Really Planning to Swim Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal for Earth Day

Christopher Swain already knows that you think he must be crazy to even consider swimming in the Gowanus Canal.

This is a waterway, after all, that is most often described with the adjective fetid. Once a lovely tidal stream, prized by the Native Americans who fished in it and gathered oysters along its shores, the Gowanus is now a federal Superfund site, running right through the heart of a rapidly gentrifying section of Brooklyn. More than a century of intensive industrial use and runoff from surrounding streets has left a toxic brew of chemicals, including many carcinogens, in the water—which is sometimes covered with a weirdly beautiful iridescent sheen resulting from the many petroleum products that contaminate the canal. It is also often, after heavy rainstorms, filled with raw sewage, due to overflow from the city’s antiquated storm water system.