Some people don’t mind a little urban adventure, even if they could end up swimming in sewage.
For the last four years, Ryan Chew has rented out canoes and kayaks on the Chicago River from a launch between Addison Street and Belmont Avenue. His Chicago River Canoe & Kayak has a second location near Oakton Street in Skokie.
Chew saw an opportunity to draw people to a once-meandering stream that is the cleanest it has been since engineers reversed its current in the early 1900s to keep human and industrial waste out of Lake Michigan.
But more than 60 percent of the river’s flow is still treated sewage.
With Mayor Richard Daley promising to make the river a place people want to be, disinfection could be required in the future.
Until then, anybody who dips a canoe or kayak into the water is advised not to drink it. Open cuts aren’t a good idea, either.
But a lack of experience with a canoe apparently isn’t an issue.
“It’s the 20-year-old guys who tend to fall in,” Chew said last week. “It’s got less to do with a lack of skills and more to do with goofing around.”
Folks at the civic group Friends of the Chicago River often try to build support for the river revival by taking potential patrons on canoe floats. The staff always makes sure to bring disinfecting wipes along for the trip; hand-washing stations are waiting for the paddlers when they return to shore.
Laurene von Klan, the group’s executive director, said: “We are realistic about what we are looking at.”
