WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. boasted about taking a dip in Washington’s Rock Creek, despite the National Park Service banning swimming in the water due to high bacteria levels.
In a post on X over the weekend, Kennedy shared photos of a Mother’s Day outing with family to Dumbarton Oaks Park, located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, in which he noted he took “a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek.” One of the pictures appears to show the Health and Human Services secretary completely underwater.
A reader note was added on the post by X, owned by billionaire adviser to President Donald Trump Elon Musk, informing readers that swimming in Rock Creek is “dangerous and prohibited by the National Park Service.”
On its website, the National Park Service notes that Rock Creek contains “high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens” that make contact with the water “a hazard to human (and pet) health.”
It warns visitors to stay out of the water to keep oneself safe from illness and adds that swimming in it is banned in Washington.
The District of Columbia’s city government website notes that swimming was originally banned due to “fecal bacteria” in the water from sewer overflows. Although it goes on to say that levels have improved, it adds that all the rivers and streams in Washington have failed to meet water quality standards to allow swimming all of the time.
The District of Columbia Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Program shows areas of Rock Creek failing recent tests for levels of E. coli. Some areas passed. A full report from local government in 2022, meanwhile, found “chronic elevated levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli) contamination that exceeded D.C.’s surface water quality standards” at three Rock Creek monitoring sites.
The head of the nation’s top Health department is known to be particularly health conscious when it comes to ultra-processed foods and additives in the country’s diet but has come under criticism for some of his other views that some experts say are not backed by science, such as beliefs he has expressed about vaccines.
Last year, Kennedy shared that doctors found a dead, parasitic worm in his brain in 2010 after contracting a parasite during his time doing environmental work overseas.
Dumbarton Oaks Park is owned and maintained, according to the National Park Service, by Harvard University, which has been in a feud with the Trump administration.
Spectrum News’ Joseph Konig contributed to this report.
