French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo promised to take a dip in the Seine River to prove it is safe for the Olympics, according to Bloomberg.
In 1988, the late French President Jacques Chirac boasted that he would bathe in the Seine to show how clean it was. However, he never did. More than 35 years later, when some 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) was earmarked to clean up the river, Hidalgo, made a similar promise. Yet there is much more at stake now.
To show that Seine is ready for the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, she promised a swim this week after having already postponed it once before. On Saturday, Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra swam a few metres in a body suit and claimed:
“We kept our promise.”
However, earlier this year, reigning Brazilian open water champion Ana Marcela Cunha declared that “the Seine is not made for swimming.”
Despite efforts to clean up the river, a series of rainy days could cause the city’s sewage system to overflow, releasing sewage and the bacteria it contains into the Seine. The money spent on the clean-up would then literally go down the drain.
The colossal event, which effectively ended a century-long ban on swimming in the Seine, attracted worldwide attention. The objectives of the project, announced as part of the city’s bid to host the games, reflect the challenges faced by major metropolises such as London and Sydney, which are located on the body of water.
Pierre Rabadan, a former rugby player who’s now the deputy Paris mayor in charge of sports, said:
For almost a century, the Seine has been used for boats — either with tourists or freight. No one really cared about it… With the games, we’ve brought [its cleanup] back to the forefront.
River cleansing challenge
Given decades of underinvestment in the city’s sewage system and misguided methods of dealing with Parisians’ faeces, the idea of an unpopular mayor and an equally unloved president going for a swim has sparked humour on social media. More seriously, however, Paris has staked its reputation on the project, spending hundreds of millions and promising to provide several swimming spots each summer.
The consequences of swimming in a dirty river for athletes are well known. According to a 2012 study, hundreds of swimmers fell ill after taking part in a 2.25-mile long race in the Thames, in the London area.
They developed symptoms such as nausea, diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, or vomiting in the following days, according to a study by the UK health authorities. Four were hospitalised.
To address the pollution problems, Mayor Hidalgo in May inaugurated a large underground tank that looks like a cathedral with huge columns. The tank was built to contain the flow of sewage during heavy rains. However, Jean-Marie Mouchel, a hydrology professor at the Sorbonne University, said that while it is useful, it will not solve the problem completely if there are heavy downpours.
“It is very near central Paris and would have a strong positive impact on localised storms. The total amount of rainwater during a big storm may be much larger.”
Meanwhile, officials say the project is ready for the Olympics. However, Mouchel notes that even on sunny days, the races could eventually be cancelled.
We recently discovered bacteria levels can vary by as much as 10 times in one day, even when it doesn’t rain. It’s hard to explain why this happens, but it adds a new source of uncertainty.
