2024-05-05 11:50:58
He Austerlitz storm tank, named as the “Cathedral” and excavated in the heart of Parisopens this Thursday, May 2, with the key mission of guaranteeing the water quality in it Senathree months before the river hosts the Olympic trials.
The Seine is one of the stars of the Olympic Games that Paris will host between July 26 and August 11. The opening ceremony will take place in its waters, as well as the marathon swimming (ex-open water) and triathlon events.
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To guarantee the quality of the river’s water, whose pollution kept citizens away for years, the authorities invested some 1.4 billion dollars.
This Thursday, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and the president of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG), Tony Estanguet, inaugurate one of the key infrastructures for this purpose: the Austerlitz depot.
Located near the homonymous train station and the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, this concrete infrastructure dug into the ground will be able to receive up to 50 thousand cubic meters of rainwater and wastewater in the event of heavy rains.
This cylinder 50 meters in diameter and 30 meters deep, which cost about 100 million euros ($110 million) and the life of a worker in 2023, will have a capacity of 20 Olympic swimming pools, says the Paris City Council.
“It is the second cathedral of Paris,” comments Antoine Guillou, Parisian councilor in charge of cleaning and the wastewater network, which must be reinforced with this dizzying tank of pillars up to 18 meters below the ground.
Created by engineer Eugène Belgrand in the mid-19th century, the capital’s old sewage system mixes wastewater and rainwater, but its operation “depends largely on meteorological conditions,” says Guillou.
In the event of heavy rain, 44 spillways pour this contaminated water into the Seine River to prevent sewers from overflowing.
The Austerlitz tank will now absorb this overflow and then return this wastewater to the sewer network for purification by a station, thus reducing unsuitable water discharged into the Seine.
“Reduce the impact”
Although this tank is part of the objective of allowing summer bathing in the Seine from 2025, the litmus test will be the Games, especially when a test in 2023 had to be canceled due to the poor quality of the water after heavy rains.
At the beginning of March, the current Olympic open water champion, Brazilian Ana Marcela Cunha, asked the organizers for an alternative “plan B” to the Sena.
Despite the investment, the former president of the environmental association France Nature Environnement (FNE) in the Paris region, Michel Riottot, estimates that a “strong and rapid rain” will quickly saturate the new infrastructure.
“In Paris, sewers, tunnels and tanks like the one in Austerlitz store 1.9 million m3 of water. A small rainfall of 10mm is 1 million m3. With a downpour (…) of 20 mm, it will overflow everywhere,” calculates this retired engineer.
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Samuel Colin-Canivez, responsible for the major works on the Paris wastewater network, acknowledges that in cases of “heavy” rain, water will be poured into the Seine and the criteria for bathing will not be met.
The mayor’s office believes that this could happen about twice a year. Despite this, “the bacteriological load that we contribute to the environment will be improved.” [natural]. So we are going to gain in the number of days we can bathe,” she clarifies.
“It is understandable that many people are skeptical,” says Guillou, even more so when bathing has been prohibited in the Seine for a century. The mayor of Paris promised to take a bath in June, before the Games.
EAM
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2024-05-05 11:50:58