Bathing in Copenhagen

I've been wanting to write about the bathing culture here in Scandinavia. From saunas and bathhouses to public baths and beaches, people here are eager to jump in the water. And Copenhagen provides many opportunities to do so right in the middle of the city. There are several public baths right in the harbor and numerous others just outside of the city.

One of my reasons for coming to Copenhagen is to discover how it is possible for people to safely swim in a formerly polluted, industrial harbor. Copenhagen, like many other cities, has a largely combined sewage and stormwater system, which (as we know in Seattle) is a huge problem for surrounding bodies of water because of Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO). This means that during heavy rainfall, sewers are overloaded, and some of the wastewater must overflow into surrounding waterways. CSOs are not the only contributing factors to a polluted waterfront, however. There is also pollution from industry, incomplete sewage treatment practices that leave metals and chemicals in the water, fertilizer runoff from agriculture, etc.

However, Copenhagen set a goal in the 1990's of making its harbor a place where people can swim safely. By aggressively building reservoirs (often as a hidden accessory to large public buildings) that manage overflows during rainy periods, Copenhagen has reduced the number of CSOs in the city from 93 in 1995 to 38 in 2010. Only during extremely rainy days do they have to close the public baths due to poor water quality. And there is a modern alert system in place so the public can easily track bathing water quality. The DHI Bathing Water Forecast indicates conditions for bathers. There are also apps for iphone and facebook that will alert bathers when conditions are poor.

To find out more about water quality in Copenhagen, I've included some helpful links:

Link: Is Clean Water an Issue?

Video: Clean Water in Copenhagen Harbor

Video: A Beach in the Harbor

The Harbor Baths, by PLOT. This photo was taken out of season, but during the summer the place is full of bathers.

Here is another harbor bathing facility. The closest pool has a shallow bottom for small children (it gets kind of mucky by the end of the season) and the far pools are deeper.

This is an image of kids windsurfing at the Maritime Youth Center on the Øresund, also designed by PLOT. Although the warm season is very short in Copenhagen, kids like to get in the water year round.

This is a photo of the Kastrup Sea Baths by White Architects, also on the Øresund. I would like to add that I was wearing a jacket on this particular day as it was not that warm out, yet all three of these kids ended up swimming for a long time (after their dad finally threw them in the water).

And this is proof that even architects love to swim. The welcome party for incoming architecture students at the Royal Danish Academy involves a canal-crossing challenge in which most of the students end up in the water.

So, where am I going with this? Well, Seattlites love the water. I believe that if we sincerely made water quality a priority, we could expand our already lovely bathing facilities at Green Lake and Lake Washington to include the Puget Sound. If it's warm enough in Copenhagen, it's definitely warm enough in Seattle. Also, creating a 'bathing' destination is another way to program our waterfront with non-commercial activities as we are envisioning a waterfront without the viaduct. Using 'bathing-quality water' as a goal is a nice way to achieve better conditions for everyone, including the animals living in the Sound.