Swimming through sewage

Posted 06.18.2003 by Big Sphincter

In swimming down the Columbia River, Christopher Swain has tasted sewage, suffered six ear infections and numbed his body in winter water as cold as 38 degrees.

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At each break, he gargles with hydrogen peroxide to help ward off infection. But he still swallows plenty of river water � noting that tastes vary according to the pollution.

Sometimes there are hints of cow manure, which tastes of mud and clover. Or sewage with a chemical aftertaste from the treatment plants. He didn't relish a swim through a stretch of Washington apple orchards being sprayed with pesticides. Afterward, he says, he suffered swollen lymph nodes.

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The Shit Volcano (3740) -- 10.19.2006

I have lived along the Columbia River. Despite groups that say they are watching the environmental health of the river, this is bullshit!

The Dalles, Oregon, located directly on the river in the Gorge area, is one of the most polluted places I have ever lived! Our house was right on the river and we had all sorts of smells, from creosote to raw sewage, waft into our yard from Oregon. I used to wake up in the morning with diesel-tasting phlegm, and if you left anything out in the rain for more than a couple of days it rusted and peeled from acid rain. Not to mention the gross taste in the tap water, or the sticky, greasy dust stuck to everything in the house.

I find it interesting that such a supposedly "environmentally friendly" region had so much sick shit in the air. Or that the country town of The Dalles has to have a cancer clinic. In our small town across the river, with a population of roughly 300, a quarter of them had cancer.

Don't swim in the Columbia River! Not only do you have to contend with the hazards of Hanford (our infamous nuclear depository), but it has to pass through The Dalles, a place where I used to watch garbage floating by on the river from my parents' back porch. Then, of course, there is the outflow from the Willamette River in Portland, the pulp mill and treatment plants in Camas, and the industrial area near Kelso/Longview.

For a pair of states who claim to be so environmentally conscious, this is disturbing.

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I was a category five! Category five, I tell you! Get it right or I'll be back to PROVE IT!!!!- Katrina