A costly and complex clean-up is resuscitating the River Seine in the French capital just in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The city and its region aim to turn the Seine's clouded waters into a venue for outdoor swimming events.
The 2024 Olympic deadline has supercharged a clean-up that has been decades in the making.
Without the imperative of having to be ready for 10,500 Olympians in July and August next year, followed by 4,400 Paralympians, Paris City Hall officials admit that it would have taken many more years to fund the multi-pronged, 1.4 billion-euro effort.
As well as hosting outdoor swim races, the Seine is going to be the centerpiece of Paris's unprecedented Olympic opening ceremony. For the first time, the opening will take place not in a stadium setting but along the river and its banks.
Olympic triathletes and marathon swimmers will set off from the ornate Alexandre III bridge in the heart of the capital.
An Olympic law adopted in 2018 gave moored boats two years to hook up to Paris' sewage network. Waste water treatment plants on the Seine and its tributary, the Marne, are also being improved.
Storage basins
And more than half a billion euros is being spent on huge storage basins and other public works to reduce the need to discharge untreated bacteria-laden wastewater into the Seine after heavy rainfall.
One storage facility is being dug next to Paris's Austerlitz train station.
The giant reservoir will hold the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools of contaminated water that will now be treated rather than being dumped through storm drains into the river.
City Hall says the water quality is already improving and that many species of fish are returning.
The authorities say 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".
Bathing spots
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 when swimming in the Seine was unthinkable, Parisians will start to feel it’s safe to go back in the water.
The prospect of cooling dips in the river should help France's capital remain liveable during increasingly frequent heatwaves.
It possibly might also inspire other cities to invest in reclaiming their waterways.
"It will create waves, so to speak, across the world because a lot of cities are watching Paris," says Dan Angelescu, a scientist who is tracking the Seine’s water quality for City Hall.
"It’s the beginning of a movement," he says.
(with wires)
