Inside the Olympic River Seine cleanup initiative, and why a wet day could ruin everything

Avoid consuming the water. One local swimmer told TFD News, “You can swim, but don’t drink.”

TFD – Dive into the latest updates on Paris River safety. Learn about the precautions for swimming and the risks of water consumption. Stay informed about pollution concerns and their impact on public health, especially with the upcoming Paris Olympics.

PARIS: On a sunny spring day, the three kayakers were hoping to enjoy more than just the sun, a light breeze, a nice current, and the sun as they meandered down the Seine River; they were also searching for trash.

They collected every bit of plastic debris and the debris from daily life in the French capital that washes into the river after every downpour by fastening nylon stockings to the side of their kayaks. The Arc de Seine Kayak Club then sent in their collected material to be analyzed for the presence of microorganisms.

At the Pont de Sevres in the heart of Paris on Sunday, a giggling Paul Maakad told NBC News, “My kayak capsized this morning and I’m OK.”

With less than 100 days until the 2024 Paris Olympics, worries are growing that competitions like the marathon swim, triathlon, and paratriathlon may be canceled due to high pollution levels, or that the flotilla-based opening ceremony may be impacted. Despite this, Maakad, 40, and his fellow boaters claimed they were not afraid to enter the river.

The president of the Paris Organizing Committee, Tony Estanguet, stated earlier this month that he was certain “that it will be possible to use the Seine,” but he also acknowledged that the triathlon’s swimming phase might be postponed if pollution levels were too high. Naturally, that’s what we want to stay away from, he stated.

Days earlier, a French charity had issued a warning about the significantly higher than allowed levels of germs in the river, including “pollution of fecal origin.

In an ambitious effort to allow public swimming in the Seine by 2025, after it was prohibited for a century due to dangerously high pollution levels, France has invested 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in modernizing and modifying the city’s outdated sewage system, which now includes the Austerlitz Basin, a 13 million gallon overflow tank.

However, the test marathon’s swim phase was called off in August due to the river’s failure to pass pollution testing.

One of the businesses hired by the mayor of Paris to monitor the germs in the water, Fluidion, exclusively shared its results with NBC News as the opening of the games drew near.

E. Coli levels in a sample of water taken beside the Pont Alexander III bridge in the city center were 2.5 times higher than those deemed suitable for swimming.

The CEO of Fluidion, a tech business that makes water testing tools, Dan Angelescu, says that alone isn’t necessarily an issue for the Games.

In an interview this month, he stated, “You can actually reach really good water quality conditions in the summer when there is a lot of sunlight, when the water flow, river flow rate is really low, and when there is no rain for several weeks, let’s say two or three weeks without rain.

However, he cautioned that even a little rainstorm could cause an increase in E. Coli.

He remarked, “You could swim in extremely contaminated water and nothing bad would happen to you, or you could swim and get itches, infections, or a potentially harmful strain of E. coli.” “Those are rare, but they do exist, and they have the potential to seriously harm you.”

However, he issued a warning, saying that exposure to additional bacteria linked to the presence of E. coli might result in diarrhea or a norovirus infection, “or you could get certain diseases that can really kill you.”

Both Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Emmanuel Macron have pledged to swim in the river to demonstrate its cleanliness in an effort to increase public trust.

Parisian head of public policy Pierre-Antoine Molina declared he would do the same. He said that the river’s water quality “has been gradually improving” in a Monday interview.

The network that separates wastewater and precipitation has improved, he continued, and wastewater treatment plants have been brought up to date as a result of the city’s sewage system update.

He said that since the city dates back to the Roman era, “that’s inevitably a big task,” and that many structures were constructed following World War II, “and the sewage system did not always cope.”

Approximately thirty miles downstream from Paris, Edouard Combette, fifty, dove headlong into the fabled river that has inspired the likes of impressionist painter Claude Monet.

After getting a breather, he remarked, “Life is good here,” adding that he wasn’t sure if the water was entirely safe.

“Avoid consuming the water. Don’t drink, but you can swim,” he said. “I don’t know of any deaths or illnesses.”