Costly and complex cleanup of Seine River underway ahead of 2024 Paris Olympics
READ MORE: Paris mayor says Russia wont have a team at 2024 Olympics if Ukraine invasion continues
So it needs to be ready. Officials have been going after homes upstream of Paris and houseboats on the Seine that were emptying their sewage and wastewater directly into the river. An Olympic law adopted in 2018 gave moored boats two years to hook up to Paris sewage network. Sewage treatment plants on the Seine and its tributary, the Marne, are also being improved.
And more than half a billion euros (dollars) is going into huge storage basins and other public works that will reduce the need to spill bacteria-laden wastewater into the Seine untreated when it rains. One storage facility is being dug next to Paris Austerlitz train station. The giant hole will hold the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools of dirty water that will now be treated rather than being spat raw through storm drains in the river.
City Hall says the water quality is already improving and that there are many more types of fish than the two or three species that were the only ones hardy enough to survive in the filth a few decades ago. It says samples taken daily last July and August in the stretch of river where Olympians and Paralympians will compete showed the water quality was overwhelmingly good. By their sports standards, that means acceptable.
Setting off from the Seines ornate Alexandre III bridge, triathletes will race first in 2024, with men on July 30, followed by women the next day. Then come marathon swimmers, on Aug. 8 and 9, and para-triathletes on Sept. 1 and 2.
Rigaudeau, who competed in para-triathlon at the 2021 Tokyo games, is thrilled by the prospect. Hes hoping for an early taste of the experience when Paris hosts warm-up swims in the Seine this summer to hone its readiness for 2024. It will be Rigaudeaus first-ever dip in his home river.
We will be the testers, he says. I hope we dont get sick.
After the games, the river should then reopen to everyone in the summer of 2025. City Hall says five potential bathing spots are being studied within Paris itself, with others a bit further afield.
Officials hope that after so many years where swimming in the Seine was unthinkable, Parisians will start to feel that its safe to go back in the water when they see Olympians and Paralympians leading the way.
Its going to change our lives, Rigaudeau says. But its also true that because everyone thinks that its really very dirty, Im not sure if people will go of their own accord, at least at first.
Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris contributed.
Left:
Oct 22, 2022; Paris, FRANCE; General view the Eiffel Tower and the Seine river, as seen from Pont Alexandre III in advance of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games. The bridge will serve as the site for triathlon, open water swim and road cycling. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
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