"NEW YORK — A clean-water advocate took an Earth Day swim in the polluted Gowanus Canal, a federal Superfund site.

'I'm going in!' yelled Christopher Swain, wearing a yellow-and-black protective suit and a green swim cap as he crossed a railing into the water near a sewage discharge point in Brooklyn, where a sign warns people to stay out of the water.

He was accompanied Wednesday by a woman in a kayak, paddling a few feet away from him.

'It's not safe to swim in here,' he said afterward, stating the obvious. The canal water 'tasted like mud, poop, ground-up grass, detergent, gasoline.'"

Verena Dobnik reports for the Associated Press April 23, 2015. [2]