2024-07-16 06:27:07
The water quality of the Seine river is suitable for bathing, according to the last 12 days, said this Friday the Paris City Hall.
The water quality met the required standards “nine or ten days” of the last 12, he told Radio France Internationale (RFI) Deputy Mayor responsible for the Olympic Games and the Seine, Pierre Rabadan.
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According to the Olympic calendar, the Seine will host the Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26. The triathlon events will be held on July 30 and 31, as well as August 5; open water swimming will be held on August 8 and 9; while the paratriathlon will be held on September 1 and 2.
“We hope that the weather will be a little better, but we are not at all worried about the possible holding of the competitions, which will take place,” Rabadan added.
Weekly analysis
As every week since the beginning of June, the city council and the prefecture publish the results of their analyses of the water quality of the Seine every Friday.
Last week, according to the two institutions, the river was suitable for swimming for the first time for several days in a row.
Authorities are worried that there could be heavy rainfall in the coming days. In Paris, rainwater and sewage flow through the same network, designed in the 19th century, and when there is exceptional rainfall, the sewers overflow.
To remedy this, two wastewater treatment plants upstream were modernized, and a new stormwater treatment plant went into operation at the beginning of the year.
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A giant rainwater collection tank was also inaugurated in May in Austerlitz, near the centre of Paris, capable of holding 50,000 m3 of water, the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools.
Plan B would be to postpone the date of the trials, and ultimately move the open water swimming event to Vaires sur Marne, east of Paris.
French authorities have spent some 1.4 billion dollars to clean up the river, where Parisians have been banned from bathing for a century because of river navigation and pollution.
EAM
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2024-07-16 06:27:07