For centuries, the Seine River has been Paris’s dumping ground. A billion-dollar cleanup is trying to make it swimmable again.
Notre Dame Cathedral reigns over the city from its perch on the Île de la Cité. The Seine’s water helped extinguish the 2019 fire and has been aiding in the restoration, including the rebuilt spire, by transporting building materials.After an ambitious $1.5 billion clean-up project, the Seine River will play a leading role in both the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“Our objective is an Olympic legacy,” says Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor in charge of sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the Seine. “That you and me or whoever happens to be in Paris can swim in the Seine.” Athletes start the swim section of the Elite Women’s 2023 World Triathlon Olympic Games Test Event along the Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris, France. The swimming section of the event took place in the Seine river.Riverboats offer a front-row seat to the sights along the Seine, its UNESCO-listed banks lined with monuments. Tourism is just one industry fueled by the waterway.Today there’s a movement in the other direction.
“The Olympics acted as an accelerator,” says Rabadan. “Without the games, would probably have taken 10 more years.”River water passes through an aeration tank at the SIAAP Seine Aval plant, an instrumental player in making the Seine more swimmable.“There are a lot of people in Paris who don’t know that the Seine is in good health right now.
Paris is an extremely well organized city, whose bowels are crisscrossed by layers of old quarries, Métro tunnels, sewers, gas pipes, and electricity cables. Within this densely urban milieu, a tunnel was bored underground and piped under the Seine, allowing a flow of stormwater.
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