Paris' dream of swimming in the Seine is part of its vision of the Olympic Games. July 12, 2024

Seine River by Leica Palma Pexels

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Paris' dream of swimming in the Seine is part of its vision of the Olympic Games.

Paris (AFP) - Taking a dip in the Seine on a hot summer's day has been the dream of many Parisians since swimming in the river was formally banned a century ago.

But floating on your back under the Eiffel Tower could become a reality very soon, thanks to investments linked to this month's Paris Olympics.

Weather permitting, the river will be the star of the Games opening ceremony on July 26 and will then host the triathlon and marathon swims.

Then, if all goes well, next summer Parisians and tourists will also be able to take a dip in the river.

Like Zurich and Munich, Paris has been reclaiming its river with one of the three new urban "beaches" that will open under the windows of the historic city hall next year, with another almost at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Almost 30 others - complete with pontoons, showers, and parasols - are planned for the suburbs and along the Marne, which flows into the Seine to the east of the French capital.

Once considered an open-air dump, former French president Jacques Chirac launched the idea of swimming in the Seine for the first time in 1990.

But it was current mayor Anne Hidalgo who took the idea forward, making it a pillar of her 2016 Olympic bid.

Some 1.4 billion euros (US$1.51 billion) have been spent on colossal public works to combat pollution, and Hidalgo has promised to swim in the Seine next week to prove her cleanliness.

But with the capital suffering an exceptionally wet start to the year, causing regular discharges from the city's sewage system into the river, the mayor has repeatedly had to postpone going into the water.

Failed water quality tests

The Seine's water quality fluctuates wildly after big storms, which causes untreated sewage to be released, meaning that there is still suspense over whether the Olympic swimming will take place.

The disastrous Olympic test events in August last year raised doubts about the possibility of triathletes and marathon swimmers competing for gold in the Seine.

Most of the events had to be canceled because the water didn't meet European standards for two bacteria found in feces.

Exceptionally heavy rains and a faulty valve in the sewage system were blamed.

But this prompted the reigning Olympic marathon swimming champion, Ana Marcela Cunha, to call for a "plan B".

"The athletes' health must come first," the Brazilian great told AFP.

In recent weeks, the river has continued to fail pollution tests, although the dry weather forecast for the coming weeks should help to raise standards.

Only a few people swim in the river regularly and their testimonies are not always reassuring.

Lifeguard Gaelle Deletang, 56, a member of the French capital's aquatic civil defense team, had "diarrhea and a rash" after swimming in the Seine in central Paris last winter.

Several other volunteers "came down with a virus for three weeks... and all had stomach problems," he added.

Young adventurer Arthur Germain - who is the son of the mayor of Paris - also came across "zones where I had trouble breathing" due to industrial and agricultural pollution when he swam the entire 777-kilometer (482-mile) length of the Seine in 2021.

In the deepest countryside of Burgundy - days before arriving near Paris - he measured levels of fecal matter well above EU limits for swimming. Further north, he swam alongside farmers spraying pesticides on the riverbank.

His "worst day", however, was a few kilometers downstream from the capital, when he passed a sewage treatment plant in Gennevilliers.

Sofas, scooters, and corpses

However, the quality of the water has remained on a steady upward curve.

Five large anti-pollution plants went into operation before the Games, while wildlife is returning and the amount of garbage floating in the waterway has decreased.

His 20-meter (65-foot) catamaran Belenos sucks up garbage ranging from dead leaves and plastic bags to bicycles.

Delorme, 36, has seen it all. "Scooters, sofas, dead animals, and, once or twice a year, human corpses. You get used to it," he told AFP.

But year after year, the garbage the boat collects has been falling, from a maximum of 325 tons to 190 tons in 2020.

The effort to make the Seine swimmable for the Olympics has accelerated a French government plan to limit the entry of wastewater and sewage into the Seine and the Marne.

A 2018 law obliges boats and barges that ply the Seine to be connected to the city's sewers to prevent them from being discharged directly into the river. The authorities say that almost all of them are now following the rules.

"Uncontrolled discharge has a major impact on fecal bacteria in the river," said Jean-Marie Mouchel, professor of hydrology at Sorbonne University.

Another problem has been leaking sewage pipes from around 23,000 homes in the suburbs, with shower and toilet water being flushed directly into the environment.

The authorities have been going door-to-door offering subsidies to fix them and threatening penalties if they aren't fixed.

"We've gone from 20 million cubic meters to two million cubic meters of discharges into the Seine per year in recent years," said Samuel Colin-Canivez, head of major works for the Paris sewage network.

- The return of the fish -

Hydrologist Jean-Marie Mouchel has seen major signs of improvement in the river's health, with better "oxygenation, ammonia, and phosphate levels".

Although the Seine "hasn't become a wild river again", it now has "more than 30 species of fish, compared to three in 1970", said the professor.

Bill François, who fishes up to five times a week near the Pont Marie in the historic center of Paris, caught a surprisingly large catfish on the day he spoke to AFP - something he never expected to find in the Seine.

The 31-year-old physicist also caught a small perch, which is becoming increasingly numerous. Half a century ago, "there were none left," he said.

Other fish that need much higher quality water is also returning, he said, as well as "insects, crustaceans, small shrimps, sponges, and even jellyfish".

For microbiologist Françoise Lucas, who has been following the efforts to clean up the Seine for years, the weather will ultimately decide the fate of the Olympic events on the river.

"Everything that could be done (technically) has already been done," Lucas told AFP.

Large treatment plants

Upstream from the capital, one of the newly modernized sewage plants is using an innovative treatment method based on performic acid - an "organic disinfectant" - according to Siaap, the body that deals with wastewater and sewage in the Paris region.

It insists that the acid is safe and "disintegrates quickly before it even comes into contact with the natural environment".

Not far from there, a new stormwater control station has come into operation. Dug underground in Champigny-sur-Marne, southeast of Paris, it is designed to prevent the river from being polluted by heavy rainfall.

And as a final safety net to prevent a repeat of last summer's failed Olympic test events, a huge new rainwater cistern has been opened near Austerlitz station, on the eastern edge of central Paris.

At 50 meters wide and 30 meters deep, it can hold the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools.

A veritable underground cathedral exists to prevent rainwater from flooding the sewers and overflowing into the Seine.

Even so, "statistically, there are a few storms a year for which it won't be entirely sufficient," admitted Mayor Marc Guillaume, Paris' top state authority.

Urban beaches

"We'd forgotten about the Seine," said Stephane Raffalli, mayor of the Paris riverside suburb of Ris-Orangis, where one of nearly 30 new urban beaches will open next year. "There are people who have lived here for years and have never walked along the banks of the river."

However, suburbanites still swam in the Seine until the 1960s and into the 1970s on the Marne, where riverside lidos called "Little Trouville" or "Deauville in Paris" did their best to evoke the vacation atmosphere of the English Channel beach resorts.

In Champigny-sur-Marne, the old "beach" had "a kind of small pool where children could touch the bottom", recalled 74-year-old Michel Riousset. "Everyone had their hut."

Ris-Orangis hopes that his old river pool complete with huts, built around 1930, will be back in operation next year.

"We carried out pollution studies over a long period and it is safe" to swim in the river, the mayor insisted.

With climate change and the prospect of summer temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in Paris, the need for a place to cool off in summer has never been greater.

But some have already taken the risk. On a hot evening last July, around 20 swimmers were enjoying the Seine on Ile Saint-Denis, where the Olympic Village was built.

Josue Remoue swims in the river three times a month, from May to October.

"I've never been sick," said the 52-year-old civil servant. "The water is more dodgy at the edge, I don't usually stay there." And he never "stays underwater".

Remove goes into the water on Sundays or at night to avoid barge traffic.

The night AFP joined his group, the water was a little earthy, but not murky. With a temperature of 25°C, the scene along the riverbank was almost bucolic, despite the nearby apartment towers.

"It's completely different from swimming in a pool," said Celine Debunne, 47, as she came out of "a super two-kilometer swim.... I love swimming like this".

© 2024 AFP