A Climate Justice Story

Can We Keep
Swimming?

Climate change. Inequality. The sport I love.

01 — Introduction

My Joy:
Swimming

I've been swimming for over 15 years, and the water has always felt like home. Whether in pools, oceans, or lakes, I've always been drawn to the feeling of moving through it and competing.

Now, I swim on the William & Mary Tribe swimming varsity team as a multiple CAA conference medalist. As a data science minor, this project brings those parts of my life together: using data to expose hidden injustices in swimming.

"What happens to swimming as climate change worsens — and how can we keep it alive?"

Competing butterfly stroke in outdoor pool W&M freestyle race Team celebration after race CAA championships celebration
02 — The Question

What does it take
to keep swimming
possible?

💧

Safe Water

Not all water is safe to swim in

🏊

Equal Access

Not everyone has equal access to swimming

⚡

Sustainability

Pool infrastructure is resource-intensive

03 — Water Safety

The Water Isn't Always Safe

About 70 million pounds of atrazine are applied to American crops every year. Every spring, rain washes it off farm fields and into rivers, lakes, and drinking water systems. The EPA's legal limit is 3 parts per billion. The data below — collected by atrazine's own manufacturer, Syngenta, under a legal agreement with the EPA — shows what actually ended up in finished drinking water across seven states from 2010 to 2019.

Source: EPA Atrazine Monitoring Program (AMP), 2010–2019 — epa.gov · Finished drinking water samples only · Red bars = peak reading exceeded EPA's 3 ppb legal limit

What atrazine does

It's an endocrine disruptor linked to birth defects, hormone disruption, and cancer. In 2025, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as a probable human carcinogen. Frogs exposed at levels 30× below the EPA limit changed sex.

What Syngenta did

Syngenta paid scientist Dr. Tyrone Hayes to study atrazine — then tried to suppress his findings when he found harm. When he went public, they sent reps to follow and discredit him. In 2013, they settled a drinking water contamination lawsuit for $105 million.

What the EPA did

In 2003, the EPA let Syngenta into closed-door negotiations and re-approved atrazine with no restrictions — while the EU banned it. In 2020, they re-approved it again using a safety model built by Syngenta itself, allowing 50% more into US waterways. Atrazine is banned in Switzerland — Syngenta's home country.

Takeaway: This is not a story about accidental pollution. It is a story about a corporation that suppressed its own funded research, and a government that chose industry access over public health. Contaminated water doesn't just threaten drinking supplies — it closes swimming holes, degrades the open water that communities depend on, and hits low-income and rural communities hardest, who are least likely to have safe pool alternatives.
04 — Access & Inequality

Who Gets to Swim?

Swimming is often portrayed as a universal sport — but access to lessons, facilities, and safe water is deeply unequal. The CDC's 2024 Vital Signs report measured exactly this: who knows how to swim, and who has ever had a lesson, broken down by race. The results are stark.

37% of Black adults cannot swim
vs.
15% of all U.S. adults cannot swim

Source: CDC Vital Signs, May 2024 — cdc.gov/vitalsigns/drowning · MMWR Vol. 73, No. 20 · All figures from a nationally representative survey, Oct–Nov 2023

Takeaway: 37% of Black adults cannot swim, compared to 15% of all adults. 72% of Hispanic adults have never taken a swimming lesson. These gaps aren't accidental — they trace back to segregated pools, underfunded community facilities, and the high cost of lessons. Drowning death rates for Black people rose 28% between 2019 and 2021. Climate change, by closing more public pools and making natural water unsafe, threatens to deepen every one of these disparities.
05 — Pool Sustainability

Pools Have a Price

Every pool requires energy to heat, filter, and light — and water to fill and top off. Adjust the slider below to see how pool size affects resource use.

30,000 gallons

A standard backyard pool is ~15,000 gal. An Olympic pool is ~660,000 gal.

⚡ Annual Energy Use — kWh / year
💧 Annual Water Needed — gallons / year
✅ With Efficient System — kWh / year (≈30% less)
Takeaway: Larger pools mean more energy, more water, more cost. As droughts worsen and energy prices rise, maintaining pools may become harder — especially for public and community facilities.
06 — The Double Burden

No Safe Water.
No Pool Either.

Communities with the highest proportions of residents of color have the fewest public pools per capita. The same communities face contaminated or unsafe natural water. When both options are taken away at once, that is the double burden — and it is not an accident. It is the compounded result of segregation-era pool closures, chronic underfunding, and chemical pollution that disproportionately hits low-income areas.

Sources: Trust for Public Land City Park Facts 2023 (pools per capita) · US Census ACS 2022 (% residents of color, median income) · Bubble size = median household income · Color = water contamination risk level · Swimply/TPL analysis · Hover over any bubble for city details

Takeaway: The pattern is clear — move right on this chart (more residents of color) and the bubbles drop lower (fewer pools). Red bubbles have high atrazine or water contamination risk on top of that. Cities like Fort Worth, Anaheim, Houston, Memphis, and San Antonio sit in the bottom right corner: high diversity, high contamination risk, almost no public pool access. Their residents can't swim safely in natural water, and they have almost no clean public alternative.
07 — Reflection

What should it take
to keep swimming
accessible and sustainable?

Swimming has shaped who I am; I owe it my life and identity. It's given me structure, purpose, and a sense of belonging that I haven't found anywhere else.

Because of that, I think we have a responsibility to protect it, to make it more sustainable, and to ensure others have access to it. If something has given so much to us, we should be thinking about how to give back to it.

A Climate Justice Educational Engagement project · EDUC 317