The Seine is set to be a star feature of the Paris Olympics, but with just one month remaining until the opening of the games, heavy rains and pollution are keeping organisers in suspense on whether they will be able to host the open-water swimming events and a leg of the triathlon in the river.
French authorities have spent €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in the last decade trying to clean up the river by improving the Paris sewerage system, as well as building new water treatment and storage facilities.
But major storms still overwhelm the waste water network, some of which dates back to the 19th century, leading to discharges of untreated sewage directly into the river.
Watch moreParis 2024: Will the River Seine be Olympics-ready?
Test results published last Friday showed levels of E. Coli—a bacteria indicating faecal matter—were often twice as high as the maximum permitted limit for Olympic swimming during the week of 10-16 June.
Triathlon or duathlon?
“There’s no doubt that the water quality is not there yet,” the top government official for the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, told reporters, while remaining optimistic that dry summer weather would resolve the problem.
The latest readings “are not in line with the standards we will have in the summer,” he added.
For the open-water swimming, organisers have flexibility in the schedule, enabling them to delay the event several days in the event of a downpour.
In the worst-case scenario, it would be cancelled and the triathlon would become a duathlon—just running and cycling—without the swimming.
Athletes are busy training and trying to ignore the noise.
“Every time there’s been problems,” French open-water swimming coach Stéphane Lecat said last week, referring to last-minute suspense around Guanabara Bay for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and concerns about the water quality in Tokyo in 2021.
“There are places around Europe that are a lot worse than the Seine and we swim there every year,” he added.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, who wants to create public swimming spots in the river next year, last week had to postpone a much-publicised dip to demonstrate its cleanliness.
Instead, she has promised to take to the water during the week of July 14.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
