The system that allowed triathletes to swim in the notoriously filthy River Seine in Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympics could soon tell officials when it’s safe to jump into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
The devices, a patented technology developed by the Austrian company ColiMinder, do something traditional methods can’t: The automated, self-contained system conducts water quality testing and returns results almost immediately.
What can take conventional testing between 24 hours and three days, ColiMinder’s devices accomplished in under half an hour.
The Olympics marked a historic step for the Seine, which has carried generations of sewage through the French capital but has since opened as public swim sites in the heart of Paris. Officials here hope the same technology could advance Baltimore’s dream of a swimmable harbor.
The Waterfront Partnership plans to pilot one of ColiMinder’s devices in Fells Point this summer, making Baltimore the first East Coast city to test the technology.
The downtown booster group showed off the contraption at a private marina Wednesday, not far from where the organization has hosted public swim events in recent summers.
Nicknamed “Irina,” Baltimore’s new toy is a sister of the Paris devices and sits inside a cooler-sized container on the dock. This summer, it will draw harbor water through a drinking straw-sized tube and use a chemical reagent to trigger an enzymatic reaction from contact with harmful E. coli bacteria, allowing the system to monitor for contamination on-site.
Once activated, Irina can spit out results in 13 minutes, said Steven Mallette, CEO of Stelis Environmental Solutions, which distributes the devices in the U.S. and Canada. The system then cleans itself, a process that adds another 15 minutes.
The Waterfront Partnership has leased the equipment for the summer but would pay about $100,000 if the group chooses to buy it, Mallette said. That’s a hefty price tag, but he argues that the approach is considerably cheaper than shipping samples for lab testing.
Because of testing delays, Waterfront Partnership historically needed a passing result — and no rainfall — three days before giving clearance for swimming.
This rapid approach is not yet recognized by regulatory agencies in the United States, and Mallette said ColiMinder is working to get endorsement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A handful of other cities are on board. Besides Paris, ColiMinder has deployed its technology in Montreal, Sydney, Australia, and Seattle.
Adam Lindquist, vice president of the Waterfront Partnership, said he first learned about the approach when he traveled to the Netherlands last year for a conference on swimmable cities, an event sponsored by ColiMinder.
Lindquist’s group has advocated for years for a swimmable waterfront. While top city leaders and boosters have backed the campaign, some Baltimore environmentalists remain skeptical.
After hosting an inaugural swim in 2024, the Waterfront Partnership was forced to cancel last year’s event because persistent rains drove runoff and sewage into the harbor.
The Waterfront Partnership plans to reprise the event this summer, and Lindquist hopes that its experiment in real-time testing could bring more Irinas to other locations around the harbor. It also could bolster ambitions for a permanent swim site, he said.
This real-time testing device, which debuted in scientific testing in 2014, is the brainchild of ColiMinder’s founder, an Austrian inventor named Wolfgang Vogl.
Vogl, who once worked in a guitar string factory, wasn’t available for comment Wednesday.
“He’s just a dude who invented a ColiMinder,” Mallette said. “He’s just a very interesting man from Austria.”
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