Paris 2024, Games of the XXXIII Olympiadis expected to start later this month. A most of the summer olympics swimming event. The 10km open water swim is expected to take place. in the city The Seine is famous, but if the city can’t reduce E. coli colonies to safe levels, the river will have to be relocated.
Why is there so much rubbish in the Seine? It has a lot to do with the city. combined sewerage system. City street rainwater and wastewater from homes all run through the same pipes, and when there is too much water for the water treatment plant to handle, it backs up into the river.
Tests this week show that conditions on the Seine are improving, with enterococci and E. coli levels below acceptable levels as rainfall has eased in the area. Not only did the river fail all bacteria tests in June, but it also showed levels ten times higher than required to host Olympic swimming. If the river is not cleaned up in time, the open-water swimming events will be moved to another river and the triathlon will be shortened to a duathlon (which is completely pointless).
Paris is an extremely ancient city.and the sewer system was first designed in 1806 to prevent rainwater from accumulating in the streets. The sewer system has since been upgraded to incorporate indoor plumbing, but it is still a fairly antiquated system. At one point, all of the city’s sewage went straight into the river, with stormwater runoff and plumbing all running through the same pipes, so when it rained too much, the water level rose so high that the sewage once again flowed into the famous river. The city has invested millions of euros to capture the runoff and divert it away from the Seine, but it is unclear whether these efforts will be enough to make the river swimmable.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Emmanuel Macron both pledged to swim in the Seine to demonstrate the river’s cleanliness, but both postponed their swims until later in the month.
