Health Secretary Bathed His Grandchildren in Toxic Washington Pond
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Department of Health, posted photos online of himself and his grandchildren swimming in a small, dirty river in Washington, D.C., where swimming is prohibited because of sewage discharge, writes The New York Times.
Photo: Jhansen2 | Dreamstime.com
On May 11, Kennedy posted photos of himself and his grandchildren swimming in Rock Creek in Washington, where storm and sewage water is dumped during rainy seasons.
Rock Creek is a small river in northwest Washington. It serves as a drainage for sewage and stormwater. It has been found to have significant fecal contamination and high levels of bacteria, particularly E. coli. Because of the extensive contamination of Rock Creek and other rivers in the county, city officials imposed a total ban on swimming in all bodies of water in the county more than 50 years ago.
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"High concentrations of bacteria and other infectious pathogens have been detected in Rock Creek, making swimming, entering, or otherwise coming into contact with the water hazardous to human and animal health," the National Park Service said in a warning.
It emphasizes: “There is a ban on swimming in all bodies of water in the district - this applies even to simply entering the water!”
However, Kennedy posted photos of himself swimming in Rock Creek over the weekend. In one of the photos, the official is seen diving into the water. He posted on social media that he and his family (including his grandchildren) took a dip in Rock Creek while walking through Dumbarton Oaks Park on Mother's Day. The photos show them splashing around in the dirty water, too.
Dumbarton Oaks Park is located downstream from a tributary of Rock Creek called Piney Branch, which receives more than 150 million gallons of raw sewage and stormwater each year, according to the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. The city plans to build a tunnel that would reduce the amount of sewage flowing into Piney Branch and Rock Creek.
The episode was the latest in a series of unusual incidents linked to Kennedy's image as a lover of nature and adventure.
As a teenager in the 1970s, he earned a reputation as a reckless adventurer, eating wild game and contracting exotic diseases during trips to South America and on safari in Africa. He later became known for the way he handled the remains of dead animals.
(Kennedy once carried a dead polar bear cub across the Canadian border. He wanted to use the carcass for scientific or educational purposes. However, he was stopped at the border, and the case became a legal dispute over violations of wildlife import regulations. The story dates back to the 70s. In the 1990s, Kennedy brought back a whale carcass to use as a demonstration of the effects of water pollution. The story became controversial because he kept the carcass on his property. Some neighbors and critics found it extremely strange and unsanitary. – Note.)
Kennedy himself claimed that the parasitic worm "entered his brain, ate part of it, and then died."
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