+ POOL

August 7, 2024
11:30 AM

Today was A HUGE win for + POOL and for all New Yorkers!

Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced that + POOL will officially have its home at Pier 35 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We celebrated this win with elected officials and members of the Two Bridges community who have been die hard supporters of +POOL through this entire journey! New York State is partnering with New York City to jointly fund a three-month water filtration demonstration project at Pier 35 starting this August as well as a pilot of a 2,000 sq. ft. portion of the pool for final testing in 2025 to help ensure that our pool can safely provide swimming access for New Yorkers.

Governor Hochul emphasized that + POOL is all about creating safe, fun places for families to enjoy, aligning with the NY SWIMS initiative—our largest state investment in public swimming since the New Deal. “Through innovative solutions like + POOL, we are providing children and their families with safe spaces to swim in New York City,” Governor Hochul said.

Mayor Adams highlighted the importance of our waterways and the role of + POOL in providing equitable access to swimming. “New York City’s waterways are some of our most important assets. By exploring the possibility of a + POOL, we are not only building on our historic investments in public pools across the city, but also expanding equitable access to swimming for all New Yorkers, especially our children,” said Mayor Adams. “Whether it’s investing over $1 billion in capital to build and maintain public pools, opening more pools this summer, or increasing the number of lifeguards at our beaches and pools, our administration is giving New Yorkers additional ways to stay cool as climate change makes heat waves more common. We look forward to continuing to work with Governor Hochul to achieve an equitable vision for swimming in New York City.”

Friends of + POOL and global sustainable development consultancy Arup have engineered a filtration system that brings raw river water to an acceptable microbiological standard for swimming. Its filtration system is installed onsite at Pier 35. While not accessible to the public, the floating prototype platform will be used daily by Water Quality Engineers and System Operators to track water quality and demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. The system is designed to reduce turbidity in the raw water; reduce particulate organics; and reduce pathogenic organisms (bacteria, virus, protozoa). This summer’s public demonstration of the system is intended to provide New York State and Friends of + POOL with the final data needed to move forward with the installation of NYC’s first water-filtering floating swimming pool.

Data will be shared with the public and submitted to the NYC Health Department and other city agencies. The results from the study will validate the suitability of the patented system and inform the full-scale system design to achieve the water quality conditions required. Results will show how the + POOL, and its innovative filtration system, will meet water quality standards recently detailed by City and State health departments for “novel” and “nontraditional” beaches, without the use of chemical disinfectants, while providing consistent recirculation of filtered water sourced from the river.

Now, let’s break down this filtration system. It consists of:

Intake Pump. A submersible pump will be suspended in the East River to abstract the raw water for the pilot facility at 22 gallons per minute. The pump will discharge into a 500 gallon feed tank fitted with an overflow back to the river. The submersible pump will be fitted with an intake strainer basket (0.5”) to protect against fish passage and larger debris.
Pre-filtration. The containerised filtration unit will be fitted with a feed pump to allow water to be drawn from the feed tank to the filtration plant. Prior to the filtration plant, the water is pumped through a 200 micron automatic washing strainer to remove material that could damage or block the membrane filter.
Membrane filtration. The pre-filtered water is fed into the polymeric ultrafiltration membranes, which will treat the water for turbidity, bacteria,particulate organics and some viruses.
UV Disinfection. The final treatment step is the disinfection process. This will be achieved by exposing the filtered water to ultraviolet (UV) irradiation.
Test Pool. Constructed of stainless steel, the test pool is a full scale portion of the full +POOL, and will function under the same operating and environmental conditions as the full scale system and confirm the suitability of materials and components. CFD modeling has been conducted on the full scale pool to design the key elements reflected in the test pool.
Cleaning System. The membranes require periodic washing and spent wash water will be returned to the East River. The membranes will require chemical backwashing (CIP and Maintenance cleans). The chemical backwash water will be stored on board the floating platform for safe disposal at the end of the testing period.

The ultrafiltration system is certified for 4-log removal of Giardia and Cryptosporidium and 1-log removal of viruses. The unit is certified to NSF/ANSI 419 to comply with the EPA Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2ESWTR). Water quality in the river will be continually monitored with a submersible multi-parameter immersed sonde probe, relaying water quality data via telemetry.

Check out the gallery of images from the filtration barge here.