What a neat-o project!

Can they really make this for only $250,000?

"+ POOL started with a simple goal: instead of trying to clean the entire river, what if you started by just cleaning a small piece of it?  And what if you could change how New Yorkers see their rivers, just by giving them a chance to swim in it?"

It looks like $250,000 gets them the ability to build the test pool, to know whether and how it'd even work:

"If the first 1,400 tiles are reserved here on Kickstarter, we'll be able to build the + POOL Float Lab in the East River this summer, testing all the filtration materials in real river conditions. This will push the project over the giant tipping point of getting into the water.

At 2,000 tiles, we'll also be able to open an exhibition and education space coinciding with the Float Lab..  It will be a public space dedicated to education and public involvement with workshops, discussions and real-time data.  It'll also be a great place to hang out near the river.

And at 5,000 tiles, we'll not only pass the critical one million dollar mark, making it the largest civic crowdfunding project to date, but we'll be able to finish the custom filtration package.  It will be complete, and we'll have a never-been-done-before system ready to go."

But if they've done their research, and it works, it'd be pretty awesome :)