Paris’ River Seine Clean-up Efforts Raise Doubts Ahead of Olympic Games
Despite a costly clean-up project of Paris’ River Seine, doubts remain over whether the famous waterway will be clean enough for athletes to swim in during the upcoming Olympic Games. Triathlon and marathon swimming are scheduled to take place in the Seine, the city’s historic waterway, where it has been illegal to swim for more than a century.
The city has invested 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in building infrastructure to catch more stormwater when it rains, which contains bacteria-laden wastewater that enters the river during periods of heavy rain and makes it unsafe to swim in. In May, Paris officials inaugurated a giant underground water storage basin next to the Austerlitz train station aimed at collecting excess rainwater and stopping wastewater from entering the Seine.
However, the water has tested unsafe for humans in recent weeks, and cleaner on other days. The World Triathlon Federation has determined that E. coli levels of 900 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters are safe for competitions, but a few spells of heavy rain could push levels beyond this limit.
According to Metin Duran, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Villanova University, the issue in Paris and the Seine River is similar to many older cities around the world, which have combined sewer systems that allow wastewater and stormwater to flow through the same pipes. With heavy or prolonged periods of rain, the pipes’ capacity is reached, and raw wastewater flows into the river instead of a treatment plant.
The monitoring group Eau de Paris has tested the river water daily, yielding results that showed unsafe E. coli levels in recent weeks followed by results in early July that showed improvement. However, testing can take up to 24 hours to get a result, so if significant rainfall occurs after sampling, results may not reflect actual conditions during the swimming events.
Paris Olympic organizers have said that if heavy rain affects the Seine’s flow during the Games, the triathlon would no longer feature the swimming portion, and the marathon swimming competition would be relocated to the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in the greater Paris region. However, organizers remain optimistic that drier, sunnier weather than what the French capital experienced in June will allow the events to go as planned, buffeted by the infrastructure upgrades.
The sun’s ultraviolet rays kill bacteria like E. coli in water, and the French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra took a plunge to demonstrate that the famed river is clean enough on Saturday.
