When I moved to Baltimore in 2014, I lived in Fells Point, a waterfront community near the city’s Inner Harbor. I would jog along the promenade and see plastic bottles, takeout containers, broken chairs and all kinds of debris floating in the murky water, which often smelled like rotting meat.

Never would I have imagined that the same waters might be safe to swim in — or that anyone would want to do so. Yet a decade later, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor may finally be swimmable, and plenty of people are eager to jump in.

The daunting task to make the harbor swimmable was spearheaded by the Waterfront Partnership, an organization that brought businesses, nonprofits, researchers and government agencies together to revitalize Baltimore’s waterfront area. Adam Lindquist, the partnership’s vice president and the leader of its Healthy Harbor Initiative, told me the effort focused on three main problems: sewage overflow, trash and stormwater.

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One reason for the harbor’s poor water quality was a major structural defect in the sewer system. A misalignment in a 10-mile-long pipe that carries much of the city’s waste to a treatment plant created a bottleneck, resulting in tens of millions of gallons of sewage overflowing into local waterways each year.

The partnership “put pressure on the city for the most important upgrades and repairs in the sewer system,” Lindquist told me. After years of advocacy, city officials finally prioritized this project and made upgrades, such as building a new pumping station and two giant storage tanks to handle excess sewage. From 2019 to 2023, Lindquist said, sewage overflow fell 76 percent.

The partnership also worked with a local company, Clearwater Mills, to pilot a sustainably powered trash receptacle to filter debris out of the water, ranging from cigarette butts to guitars, mattresses and trees. There are now four continuously operating trash receptacles in the Baltimore waterways. In 2023, they removed over 1 million pounds of trash and debris.

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Lindquist even gave the receptacles a name, “Mr. Trash Wheel,” and large googly eyes that he concocted in his basement. Over time, Mr. Trash Wheel developed a devoted following, complete with its own social media accounts. It now serves as a mascot to rally Baltimoreans to restore the harbor.

Another creative way the partnership is cleaning up the water is by cultivating oysters, which can digest algae, sewer sludge, food waste and other sediment. In fact, a single adult oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day.

Sadly, the local oyster population has declined precipitously. Two hundred years ago, the oysters could filter all the water in the Chesapeake in less than a week. Now, it would take more than a year.

Together with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other nonprofits, the partnership started incubating baby oysters and placing them at a sanctuary oyster reef. Last year, they placed 1.6 million oysters throughout Maryland. This not only improves water quality but also serves as a reminder to residents about the connectedness of the ecosystem.

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Moreover, the partnership has improved its data collection and discovered that bacterial content in the harbor was “almost exclusively rain-driven,” as Lindquist put it. That’s because sewage is more likely to overflow after heavy rainfall. It is also when animal litter is washed off the streets and into the waterways. It usually takes about 48 hours after rainfall for bacteria levels to return to normal.

Using Maryland state standards to determine whether beaches are safe to swim in, the partnership found that the harbor is now swimmable most of the time. In August 2023, for instance, the Inner Harbor passed water quality standards 92 percent of the days tested.

Based on this information, Lindquist jumped into the Inner Harbor last year. He also led a public event this June involving 150 volunteers. Thousands had expressed interest; the event filled up within minutes.

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I would love to see designated swim sites around the harbor so that Baltimoreans can experience their waterways as part of our daily lives and not just at one-off events. The water quality won’t always be safe, but, as advocates have proposed for the Potomac in D.C., there could be daily testing and a red, yellow and green alert system.

One day, I would love to swim in the harbor myself. In the meantime, I’m marveling that the same filthy water a decade ago is now so clear that I can see it teeming with fish. Baltimore’s transformation of its waterways should be an inspiring model for other cities to follow.

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