OXON HILL, Md. — A revelation by the singer Lorde before a concert in D.C. had fans confused and concerned when she announced she had taken a dip in the Potomac River during her visit to Washington.
Denis Crean has heard those groans before. Breaking the stigma that the Potomac is a filthy body of water is one he's been tackling for years. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's logged more miles swimming the Potomac.
Crean is an avid open-water marathon swimmer. For one event, he swam 22 miles on the Potomac; from the Chain Bridge to Mt. Vernon.
Since 2010, Crean has been leading groups of swimmers out onto the Potomac through the Wave One Open Water club he founded. On Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings, groups of swimmers and triathletes will gather along a dock at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and swim a course marked by inflatable buoys.
"We get various reactions to 'wow, that's great,' to 'eww, that's the Potomac," said Crean who notes that the club has been incident free for 13 years.
I wanted to know why the Potomac has such a bad reputation and what he does to counter it.
"I think it's something that came out of the '60s and '70s. There was no regulation on what people could dump in it and the health went down," said Crean. "But it's been climbing back to be a very healthy river."
Crean said that anytime there's heavy rain, he'll typically cancel a scheduled swim the next day as stormwater runoff can elevate the level of pollutants in the river.
The health of the Potomac is monitored frequently by D.C.'s Department of Energy and Environment and the results of testing are posted HERE.
Around 40 other swimmers joined on the Thursday night we joined Crean for the swim.
"This is a non-competitive, really friendly group. We're all here to support each other and to teach each other as much as they can because open water is not like pool swimming," said Tom who's one of the club's longest members. "This is a great body of water to swim in. I wish D.C. would understand this."
Crean is a swim instructor and coaches people to get more comfortable in an open water environment.
"We have such a beautiful resource that has a lot of history and is full of awe," he said. "To be able to get more people in to enjoy that. To participate and experience that; it makes all the work worthwhile."
For more about Wave One Open Water click HERE.