Athletes dive into the Seine River from the Alexander III bridge on the beginning of the primary leg of the ladies’s triathlon check occasion for the 2024 Paris Olympics in Paris in August 2023.
Michel Euler/AP
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Michel Euler/AP
PARIS — With the Paris Olympics lower than two weeks away, a query hangs over the Video games: Will the Seine River be clear sufficient for athletes to swim in?
Triathlon and marathon swimming are scheduled to happen within the Seine, the place it has been unlawful to swim for greater than a century. Regardless of town’s efforts to wash up the long-polluted river, the water has examined unsafe for people in latest weeks, and cleaner on different days. The Video games run from July 26-Aug. 11.
To wash up the river, Paris invested 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in constructing infrastructure to catch extra stormwater when it rains — the identical water that comprises bacteria-laden wastewater that enters the river in periods of heavy rain and makes it unsafe to swim in.
In Might, Paris officers inaugurated an enormous underground water storage basin subsequent to the Austerlitz prepare station geared toward amassing extra rainwater and stopping wastewater from coming into the Seine. The basin can maintain the equal of 20 Olympic swimming swimming pools of soiled water that can now be handled and is the centerpiece of main infrastructure enhancements that town has rushed to complete in time for the Video games, however to additionally make sure that Parisians have a cleaner Seine in years to come back.
However just a few spells of heavy rain may push E. coli ranges past the restrict of 900 colony-forming items per 100 milliliters that the World Triathlon Federation has decided as protected for competitions.
“The Seine will not be a particular case,” mentioned Metin Duran, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Villanova College who has researched stormwater administration. “It truly is an advanced and really expensive drawback.”
Paris, like many aged cities world wide, has a mixed sewer system, which signifies that town’s wastewater and stormwater stream via the identical pipes. With heavy or extended durations of rain, the pipes’ capability is reached, which suggests uncooked wastewater flows into the river as an alternative of a remedy plant.
Each day, the monitoring group Eau de Paris has examined the river water, yielding outcomes that confirmed unsafe E. coli ranges in latest weeks adopted by ends in early July that confirmed enchancment.
Paris Olympic organizers have mentioned that if heavy rain impacts the Seine’s stream throughout the Video games, the triathlon would not function the swimming portion — and the marathon swimming competitors can be relocated to the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium within the larger Paris area.
“It is not quite common, but it surely has occurred just a few instances,” mentioned Ollala Cernuda, head of communications at World Triathlon, a global physique for the game, about the potential of the swim portion being cancelled.
“And it is at all times linked with water high quality points,” Cernuda mentioned.
However organizers stay optimistic that drier, sunnier climate than what the French capital skilled in June will enable the occasions to go as deliberate — buffeted by the infrastructure upgrades. The solar’s ultraviolet rays kill micro organism like E. coli in water.
An AP evaluation of climate information confirmed that in 2024, Paris has seen the second-most days with rain than any yr since 1950, surpassed solely by 2016.
Importantly for the Seine’s water high quality, there have additionally been few stretches of days with out rain.
Paris solely skilled one weeklong dry spell this yr — in early June, whereas between 1950 and 2020, it was typical for town to have at the very least three such durations by the top of June, in keeping with the evaluation.
“Predictions of rainfall have turn out to be way more correct as much as every week prematurely,” mentioned Jennifer Francis, a scientist on the Woodwell Local weather Analysis Middle in Massachusetts. “However the seasonal patterns of previous many years not present dependable steerage in our hotter world.”
With the Video games approaching, the feverish debate over the cleanliness of the Seine River has turn out to be a supply of frustration for some athletes like Léonie Périault, a French triathlete who gained a bronze medal within the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“Each time I meet somebody, they fear that I’ll swim within the Seine,” Périault mentioned. “However I have been swimming on this river for a number of years now. In youth competitions, we swam repeatedly within the Seine and by no means had issues.”
Final yr, Périault took half in a check occasion within the Seine.
“The setting was unbelievable with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop and the water circumstances weren’t worse than anyplace else on the planet,” she mentioned.
On Saturday, the French Sports activities Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra took a plunge to exhibit that the famed river is clear sufficient. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has additionally mentioned she would swim within the Seine this week.
Dan Angelescu, the founder and CEO of Fluidion, a Paris and Los Angeles-based water-monitoring tech firm, mentioned there have been enhancements noticed within the river for the reason that metropolis’s new infrastructure got here on-line, however that the Seine’s water high quality remained fragile. His firm has measured the Seine’s contamination ranges for a number of years.
Angelescu mentioned it is onerous to foretell, utilizing earlier years’ information, what would possibly occur later this month — for the reason that water storage basin and different infrastructure weren’t operational till just a few months in the past.
“It is troublesome to inform,” Angelescu mentioned, talking in early July after the Seine’s water had examined cleaner than in a number of weeks prior.
“To see such a drastic enchancment and so quickly could possibly be an indication that one thing is working,” he mentioned.
