Now this is journalism. This is investigative reporting.
As Liam Quigley of Gothamist reported, New York City’s public pools were inadvertently turned into a public toilet on 203 separate occasions last year as nearly every pool in NYC was pooped in, forcing closures and cutting swimming hours for a city looking for a little relief from the sweltering heat.
Thanks to a freedom of information request, we now know that out of the 52 public pools scattered across the five boroughs, 44 had to be shut down at least once because someone dropped in a fresh dump. We’re talking full-on fecal events that the city has categorized like the Pentagon’s DEFCON levels. A solid turd is a “Level 1” incident. When someone drops a nuke into the pool in the form of diarrhea, that’s a “Level 2.”
Only two levels because there aren’t many gradients of poop out there. It’s kind of just hard and soft. Both are horrendous to squeeze out in a public pool, but one disperses a lot more than the other. Pools close for cleaning regardless of the level, and thankfully, there weren’t nearly as many Level 2s (19) compared to Level 1s (189) in the summer of 2024.
All told, New Yorkers lost more than 600 hours of pool time because swimmers couldn’t hold it until they got home—or at least to a nearby restroom. Really makes you wonder what the numbers are like in public pools across the nation. They’re probably especially high in New York City, where personal pools are much less common than in, say, Florida, where children and drunk adults are merrily pooping in pools in the privacy of their own backyards.
If you’re wondering about the cleaning protocols that go into effect when someone drops a pool deuce, it depends on the texture. If it’s diarrhea, that pool isn’t getting any visitors for over 24 hours, as it has to be thoroughly cleaned and chlorine has to be pumped into it to disinfect every square inch. A solid turd, on the other hand, only requires that the turd be skimmed out with a net and some extra chlorine tossed in to disinfect for about half an hour before people can jump back in again.
But before you jump into any pool this summer, public or otherwise, please leave your shits on the outside of the pool, preferably in a toilet. Hell, leaving one on the jumpy end of the diving board is a greater expression of courtesy than in the pool itself. Or maybe just don’t drop a turd anywhere near the pool. It is, quite literally, too hot for that shit.
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