The City of Milwaukee is leaning into its “Water Centric City” vibe. On Wednesday, June 24 officials and community partners will celebrate joining the International Swimmable Cities Coalition.
It’s made up of communities from dozens of countries committed to clean, swimmable urban waters. The global grassroots alliance launched before the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Water was a centerpiece of the games, thanks to a massive environmental cleanup of the Seine River.
“I'll give credit to Alderman Peter Burgelis, [who] approached me about it and said, ‘What do you think about this?' And I thought it was great, ran it by Mayor Johnson and we all thought it aligned with our Water Centric City initiative,” Eric Shambarger says.
I met Shambarger, director of Milwaukee's Environmental Collaboration Office (ECO), at South Shore Beach in Bay View, the site of Wednesday’s celebration.
The beach's years-in-the-making $8 million reconstruction — after years of being ranked among the worst in the nation because of poor water quality — is a symbol of what Shambarger calls the region's "second-to-none water resources."
“And so when it came time to joining the Swimmable Cities, it's like, okay, the beaches are already swimmable. But in the rivers, I think could be on a path to being swimmable by 2030. Maybe not for recreational swimmers, but you could imagine situations where having more organized events on clean water days and things like that could be a real opportunity for Milwaukee,” Shambarger says.
Historically, the Milwaukee River was swimmable. In the late 1800s, it was home to one of the first swimming schools in the country.
“But of course over time, we treated our rivers like an open sewer, then dammed it up and other things like that that really made it dangerous,” Shambarger says.
Then in the 1970s came the environmental movement and the passage of the Clean Water Act.
“And it has taken us many years of cleanup, the leadership of the [MMSD] sewerage district has been instrumental in that, but to finally start approaching that standard where we can say our rivers and lake is swimmable again is something to celebrate,” Shambarger says.
He thinks the Paris Olympics elevated that goal of swimming in rivers again.
“This is the standard to shoot for, and now that we're getting close, we want people to really get down to the beach. It's great to see families down here today to enjoy this amazing asset that we have,” Shambarger says.
Massive amounts of work lie ahead.
“The Great Lakes Restoration program, which was started with bipartisan support to clean up the Great Lakes has really, really been important to this cleanup effort. The partnerships that are going in continuously into the river cleanup, it costs money to clean it up. So it not only costs money to maintain it,” Shambarger says.
Residents play a role too.
“We all need to be smarter about not littering. All of that stuff's ending up in our water. There's always emerging issues like microplastics that we have to be aware of. So this is an ongoing issue," Shambarger says. "It's just, we always want to be going in the right direction."
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