Photo by: Brian EsquireThis is a story about swimming and sewage...two "s" words that should never be used in the same s-s-sentence...

I have explored Georgia rivers almost my entire life-first as a child "shooting the Hooch" on a raft in Atlanta and later as an adult in a 17-foot canoe. By and large, my interactions with our rivers have been from a boat.

Yet, in all my exploration, I have rarely spent an extended time exposed to the river...just swimming. For my generation, I believe this is common. For virtually anyone that came of age in the later half of the 20th century, swimming pools-clear, blue, dosed in chlorine and snake and gator-free-have been the preferred means of cooling down.

Today, most cast a leary eye at our natural swimming holes-under the often-correct assumption that these rivers are filled with water-born bacteria and viruses far more dangerous than any water moccasin. In fact, Georgia's Environmental Protection Division lists the Coosa, Etowah and Oostanaula rivers and numerous streams in the Coosa Basin as polluted due to high levels of fecal bacteria. This contamination is at its highest after heavy rains when pollutants are washed off the surface of the land and when overflows from municipal sewers systems are most common.

Knowing this information, in May I took a bold, perhaps foolish, step into the Etowah, to swim a mile and half downstream from Rome's Riverbend Center to Heritage Park with my friend, CRBI member and fellow triathlon hopeful, Joel Megginson.

The swim was beautiful and peaceful. We felt the river's sandy bottom, were stunned by how shallow the drought-stricken river has become and remarked at the coolness of the Etowah in stark contrast to the Oostanaula at the rivers' confluence.

The next day a call to CRBI's water pollution prevention hotline confirmed what I already knew: our peaceful swim was not without risk. We were, in fact, swimming in someone else's sewage. The call requested an investigation of rank smells along a tributary to Little Dry Creek in West Rome-some three miles up stream from downtown and our swimming route.

When I arrived at the small tributary, I found black, stank water. Tracing the creek up slope I found its source-a man-hole cover-recently overflowed. Condoms littered the path from the man-hole cover to the creek. Where the path of filth met the creek, the clear running tributary turned to lumpy, black water.

The culprit, according to the Rome Water & Sewer Dept., was roots clogging an aging sewer line-one which is slated for replacement when funds become available. In the meantime the clog has been removed.

If we continue to accept sewage overflows like this, if we fail to address stormwater pollutants from city streets and farm fields, our attitudes toward our rivers will, rightfully, never change. We will stick to our swimming pools, and our children will never know the joys of swimming in our rivers. They will never feel the strong current that reminds them of the power of nature - they will never really know our rivers.

This is a tragedy we can avoid with awareness, effort and money. In the meantime, if you see a head bobbing down the Etowah, it's probably me. And, let us know if you smell any sewage in your neighborhood-my health and the health of your neighbors may depend upon your action.