River 'excellent' for Paddlefest

By Alice Haymond
Post staff reporter

EVENT INFORMATION
The sixth annual Ohio River Way Paddlefest is set for Friday and Saturday at
Four Seasons Marina on the Ohio River and at the Serpentine Wall, downtown.

Events are planned on and off the water. Among them are a kid's expo, watercraft
and outfitters exhibits and sales, races, live music, and overnight camping.

For more information about Paddlefest or to register for races, visit the
organizers' Web site: www.OhioRiverWay.org.


Lee Robinson of Hyde Park finds a peaceful solace watching the sunset amidst the
otters and ducks from his kayak that he paddles down the Ohio River two to three
times a week.

"It's an amazing environment," said Robinson, who has boated through Asia, South
America and Europe since he started kayaking 36 years ago. "I have to pinch
myself to remember that I'm in the Ohio River, so close to the busy city life."

Robinson is one of more than a thousand boaters expected to participate in this
year's Ohio River Way Paddlefest, an annual event that brings people in the
community together to celebrate and promote the river as a recreational
resource.

The event begins Friday with a free environmental safety and education program
for kids from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by an outdoor festival at 5 p.m. with
boating sales, auctions, food and music. Boaters take to the river at 9 a.m.
Saturday in one of three races designated for professionals, amateurs or the
general youth and adult population or in the 6-mile float trip, the course that
Robinson will take with his family this year.

"Nothing beats having a personal experience with the Ohio," said Brewster
Rhoads, the Paddlefest chairman.

He and other boaters involved in Paddlefest act as "stewards" of the river, he
said, and try to break the dirty perception that many people have of the Ohio
River.

"We're myth busters," said Rhoads, a Mount Washington resident who has been
boating for 27 years. "We're trying to bust the myth that the Ohio River is
dirty and dangerous."

This year the drought has helped bust that myth because less rain means lower
bacteria levels in the water, resulting in better overall water quality for the
sixth annual Paddlefest.

"The drought creates the cleanest, safest, most beautiful conditions in the
river," Rhoads said.

Normally, all sewage goes through treatment plants so that the bacteria and
waste is cleaned out before the water enters the river.

When there's a hard rain, however, the sewer system can overflow and some of the
treatment is bypassed, resulting in murky waters with high bacteria levels of
fecal coliform and E. coli, said Jeanne Ison, a representative from Ohio River
Valley Water Sanitation Commission.

The dry conditions have prevented such a situation from happening. Since the
beginning of May, there has only been one day where the bacteria level exceeded
the standard limit, and that was in early June, Ison said.

"Overall, the river from Pittsburgh looks pretty good," she said. "Cincinnati
looks excellent."

Storms that moved through the area Wednesday and overnight totaled .42 of an
inch at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, according to the
National Weather Service in Wilmington. The forecast calls for scattered storms
today.

Any water quality issues that the rain may have caused should dissipate by the
time the boaters start paddling on Saturday. Bacteria need animals or humans to
feed on, a necessity that's in short supply in the water, said Rebecca Evans,
director of environmental sciences at Northern Kentucky University.

After about 48 hours, most bacteria will have either died or flowed farther
downstream, she said.

"If you can put two days between you and the rain, the waters have usually
cleared up," said Nate Holscher, the project director of Rivers Unlimited, a
citizens group created to protect and restore rivers in Ohio. "Personally, I
would canoe the day after a heavy rain. I don't feel that's a threat to my
health."

For the most part, Holscher said, boaters don't have full body contact with the
water, so the water quality would not affect boaters as much as it would
swimmers. But a hard hit of rainfall on Friday could be a danger to the event.

The regulation for Paddlefest, Rhoads said, is that if the river gets too high
and too swift, the event would be postponed, which he thought was unlikely
because the ground would soak up the rain before it reached the river.

"It's only when you get day after day after day of rain and the water doesn't
soak up that it's a problem," Rhoads said. "The earth is so anxious to get wet,
it's not a problem right now."



Publication date: 07-05-2007

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