On a warm Friday morning in early September, a small group of people gathered in Fells Point to do what some consider unthinkable: jump into the Baltimore harbor.
With pool noodles and inner tubes in hand, 20 or so harbor advocates and researchers organized by Baltimore’s Waterfront Partnership leapt into the water from a pier at Bond Street Wharf.
”We definitely had some onlookers,” said Adam Lindquist, director of the partnership’s Healthy Harbor Initiative. “And we were wondering if we were going to end up social media stars by the end of the day.”
The Waterfront Partnership announced Thursday that they’re planning something bigger — an organized public swim event for the city’s harbor in 2024. They believe it will be the first event of its kind in Baltimore’s harbor in more than 40 years.
Named Harbor Splash, the 2024 event likely will be held at Bond Street Wharf. Members of the public, 18 or older, will be able to register for one of several time slots to participate, Lindquist said. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has pledged he will jump in.
“It really was a travesty that, for generations, that none of us were able to fully enjoy [the harbor],” Scott said at Thursday’s news conference announcing the event. “But now we can do that. And we can do that more and more. We can do that most days — as long as it hasn’t rained for 48 hours.”
Harbor Splash could prove a historic milestone for a long-running effort to curb pollution flowing into the harbor, and challenge the perception of a body of water long viewed as a casualty of industry and urban life. The partnership’s original goal for a fishable and swimmable harbor was 2020.
Details of the event, such as exactly when it would occur — aside from late spring or summer — still must be worked out. The timing likely will be flexible depending on levels of harmful bacteria in the harbor.
This year, for the first time ever, the Partnership sampled key sites along the waterfront 5 days a week, Lindquist said, and found that failing scores almost always came in the 48 hours after rainstorms, which carry polluted runoff into the harbor, and sometimes overwhelm the city’s aged sewer system, causing leaks into waterways.
In other words, the data showed that it’s mostly safe to swim in the harbor as long as the weather has been dry.
Though it’s safe to swim in the harbor many days of the year, organizers recommend joining guided events, due to hazards such as boat traffic. They hope the 2024 plunge could lead to more swimming events, incluuding races and triathlons, being held in the harbor.
There remain plenty of skeptics, Lindquist said, which is part of the reason advocates decided to jump in themselves before advertising the swim event for 2024.
“We all survived,” Lindquist said. “It’s funny you have to say that, but there really is a huge stigma around water quality in the Baltimore harbor.”
Alice Volpitta, Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper for local nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore, cautioned that it’s difficult to be 100% certain that the harbor is perfectly safe for swimming on any given day, partially because sewage contamination is unpredictable.
Reporting from Baltimore City indicates there can be illicit discharges of sewage — even in dry weather. The latest report included several such instances, representing hundreds of thousands of gallons of pollution, including some in the Fells Point area.
“The decision whether or not to swim or recreate in our region’s waterways is a personal decision about what is an acceptable level of risk,” Volpitta said in a statement.
For those not comfortable swimming, the partnership, which includes Baltimore businesses, government and nonprofits, is working to improve infrastructure for kayaking and paddle boarding in the harbor, including new kayak launch points at Rash Field and in Fells Point next year. It also plans to install signage that would guide paddlers through a trail network branded the Baltimore Blueway.
The partnership’s latest announcement comes at a turning point for the Inner Harbor. The city’s once-beloved Harborplace, twin mini-malls along the waterfront promenade downtown, are to be demolished soon. Developer Dave Bramble unveiled a new vision for the area that includes two residential towers, a waterfront park and a picturesque retail and commercial building to be named “The Sail.”
Notably, the renderings unveiled last week included a nod to visions of swimming in harbor. One rendering included swimming platforms, a lifeguard stand and what appeared to be a wave pool, complete with a surfer.
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While the designs are “aspirational,” Bramble said in a statement, they are based on public input.
“One of the most liked images during our community engagement process were floating islands in Copenhagen harbor which included swimming pools utilizing the water of Copenhagen Harbor,” Bramble wrote. “As a community, we have been talking for years about making the Harbor swimmable again. We took seriously long-term resiliency and environmental impact in the design of the promenades. We also wanted to show what’s possible for our City in years to come.”
Bramble has estimated that improvements to public areas such as the promenade will require about $300 million in government funds, plus $100 million more to reconfigure Pratt, Light and Conway streets.
Though the Inner Harbor’s bacteria scores have been improving since the Waterfront Partnership began its reporting in 2009, plenty of work remains. Among the biggest reasons for the improvement has been a steep decline in sewage overflows as the city improves aged infrastructure under a consent decree with the federal government.
The biggest piece of the puzzle was the completion of the Headworks project at the Back River Wastewater Treatment plant, which addressed a sewage “bottleneck” leading into the facility.
The city also recently signed onto another consent decree for the Back River plant and its sister plant along the Patapsco River, after environmental inspections showed that the two facilities frequently failed to remove enough pollutants from wastewater before dumping it into the two rivers. The decree mandates a repair schedule and staffing improvements for the two facilities.
Michael Hankin, president and CEO of Brown Advisory, and a longtime leader in the partnership, said it will be important to hold the city to account for infrastructure problems, but he’s encouraged by the work done so far.
“There will always be times when the city is functioning well and times when it’s not functioning well. And it’s necessary to stay on top of that,” he said. “These are complex systems, and they’re run by people. But the city’s putting a lot of money into fixing these systems.”
There’s also still work to be done to determine the reason for the bacteria spikes that do not accompany rainstorms. Currently, researchers have a few hypotheses.
One possibility is so-called “turnover events” that occur following swings in air and water temperature, and bring old polluted sediment to the surface, Lindquist said. Another option is that the presence of wildlife, such as geese often spotted along the promenade, could be causing spikes, demonstrating a need to redirect the birds to other locations.
In 2024, the partnership plans to further enhance its monitoring, using DNA markers to determine the sources of bacteria captured in samples from the harbor. That could help determine whether bacteria is coming from urban wildlife, human waste or polluted sediment, guiding future steps to continue reducing pollution that makes swimming dangerous.
The partnership also has tracked changes in wildlife in the harbor’s waters, according to its latest report.
This year, an onlooker spotted a bottlenose dolphin in the harbor, and rockfish charters pursued the state’s signature fish into the harbor, unlike previous years. This year’s dry spring could have contributed to the change, by reducing the fresh water in the harbor and therefore raising salinity levels, but improving water quality could be playing a role as well, the Partnership report notes.
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On that warm September day earlier this year, the swimmers had to contend with wildlife as well, said Hankin, who participated in the plunge.
”I went out on a paddleboard first, and just sat in the middle of the harbor and just looked around, and it was stunning to see the early morning sun,” Hankin said. “It’s the time of year where there are a lot of jellyfish, so that was a bit of a challenge. But we got around that. Nobody got stung.”
For longtime Baltimore residents, the idea of swimming in the harbor certainly takes some getting used to.
“That harbor?” asked Jade Moore, 34, as she pointed toward the water taxi terminal beside Broadway Square, when asked about the swim event.
She said she doesn’t feel ready to swim there just yet.
Her husband Bobby Moore, 35, frequently fishes along the harbor, including in Fells Point and Canton and said he’s noticed an improvement in wildlife, including rockfish and rays.
“There has been an improvement around the water and it being an ecosystem,” said Moore, a 13-year Baltimore resident who lives in Patterson Park. “I use that as a precursor to say I would want to learn more before I actually go in.”
