Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, posted photos on Sunday of himself and his grandchildren swimming in a contaminated Washington creek where swimming is not allowed because it is used for sewer runoff.
Rock Creek, which flows through much of Northwest Washington, is used to drain excess sewage and storm water during rainfall. The creek has widespread “fecal” contamination and high levels of bacteria, including E. coli, and the city has banned swimming in all of its waterways for more than 50 years because of the widespread contamination of Rock Creek and other nearby rivers.
“Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health,” the National Park Service wrote in an advisory on its website, adding “All District waterways are subject to a swim ban — this means wading, too!”
But Mr. Kennedy over the weekend shared photos of himself swimming in Rock Creek, with one image showing him completely submerged in the water. Mr. Kennedy said in the social media post that he had gone for the swim in Rock Creek during a Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with his family — including his grandchildren, who are also seen in the photos swimming in the contaminated water.
Dumbarton Oaks Park is downstream from Piney Branch, a tributary of Rock Creek that receives about 40 million gallons of untreated sewage and storm water overflow each year, according to the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. City authorities are planning to build a tunnel that will reduce the amount of sewage that flows into Piney Branch and Rock Creek.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
It was the latest in a series of peculiar incidents related to Mr. Kennedy’s outdoorsman persona.
As a teen in the 1970s, Mr. Kennedy earned a reputation as a reckless adventurer, eating bushmeat and enduring disease on trips to South America and on African safaris. He later earned notoriety for his handling of the carcasses of dead animals — including a whale and a baby bear.
Mr. Kennedy has also said that a parasitic worm had “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”