The green water in the diving pool of the Maria Lenk Aquatics Center in Rio. (Photo/Xinhua)

At a press conference held on Aug. 13, the organizing committee of the Rio Olympics explained that the green water in the diving pool is mainly caused by excessive amount of organic matter, which will do no harm to the health of the athletes.

Gustavo Nascimento, the director of venue management for Rio 2016, said that the water started to turn green on the fourth day of the Olympics. According to their investigation, about 80 liters of hydrogen peroxide were mistakenly dumped into the pool on the opening day, which reacted when after mixing with the chlorine. While this was a mistake, Nascimento emphasized that it does not pose a threat to anyone's health. 

According to Nascimento, sanitation employees have been working hard to clean the pool; however, the process is taking more time than expected. Since the synchronized swimming contest will soon begin, the organizing committee has decided to drain the pool used for synchronized swimming and transfer the water from the nearby warm-up pool into it instead. 

"The water in the warm-up pool has no problem. Athletes can give unhampered performances in that water. We expect that the problem will be fixed by the morning of Aug. 14," said Nascimento.

As for the water in the diving pool, Nascimento said: "The athletes haven't complained much about the water, and their health and safety are guaranteed. We are updating the filtration system of the pool, and the work will be finished soon. We hope that we can see some change in the water in the next 12 hours."

"Of course it is an embarrassment because we are hosting the Olympic Games," said Mario Andrada, a spokesperson for Rio 2016. "It should be light blue, transparent. We could have done better of fixing it quickly. We learned a painful lesson the hard way."