France spent £1,200,000,000 to clean up the Seine – but why is it still so dirty?

How a £1.2 billion clean-up operation of the Seine went wrong.

France may have flushed away £1.2 billion on cleaning the River Seine ahead of the Olympic Games – but actual sewage is still floating in it.

Swimming training for the triathlon was postponed for the second day in a row on Tuesday as the water was again found to be unsafe.

Further testing will be carried out on Wednesday, when it is hoped that both the men’s and women’s event can finally go ahead.

An Olympics spokesperson said: ‘Analyses carried out in the Seine today revealed water quality levels that did not offer sufficient guarantees to allow the event to be held.’

It follows years of promises from French authorities that the water quality will be ready for the summer Games.

Why is the Seine so dirty?

Strolling along the banks of the Seine, in the heart of Paris, people can marvel at the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and the Pont Alexandre III, which links to the Champs-Élysées quarter. 

It is a scenic walk, however there is one advice to tourists who do not wish to spoil their lunch – do not look down at the water.

The river, which spans 483-miles, has long had a reputation for being dirty. It was more than a century ago, in 1923, that swimming in it was banned officially.

Compared to most other large European rivers, the ability of the Seine to dilute all the urban sewage and farmland waste is low.

Alongside decades of agricultural pollution, untreated residential and industrial sewage has been discharged into the river during periods of high rainfall when the sewage systems with Paris are backed up.

Just how bad is the water quality?

In the weeks before the Olympics, tests continued to show unsafe levels of E.coli and other bacteria in the water.

This meant that athletes could become seriously ill if they swim in it during the Games.

Just a week before the start of the event, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo kept her previous promise to swim in the river, proving that it is safe for the upcoming competitions.

On July 17, she was joined by Tony Estanguet, Paris 2024 Olympic president, and Marc Guillaume, the top government official for the Paris region. They all took a dive into the water, among others. 

‘The water is wonderful,’ Hidalgo told NBC News. ‘The water is very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad.’

But a few spells of rain have now pushed it – again – to unsafe for humans levels.

Olympics organisers have said: ‘Despite the improvement on the water quality levels in the last hours, the readings at some points of the swim course are still above the acceptable limits.’

Paris deputy mayor Pierre Rabadan said ‘the trend is improving’ but ‘we are still not below the necessary threshold’.

What was the £1.2 billion spent on?

Cleaning up the Seine is not an original idea, set in action specially for the Games.

Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris between 1977 to 1995, vowed to make the Seine swimmable as far back as 1988. But the plans were shelved for a long time.

Work finally began in 2016. To clean up the river, authorities invested £1.2 billion in building infrastructure to catch more stormwater when it rains – the same water that contains bacteria-laden wastewater that enters the river during periods of heavy rain and makes it unsafe to swim in.

A 50,000 cubic meter reservoir inaugurated in May to store excess rainwater was used for the first time on June 18 and 19, preventing 40,000 cubic meters of wastewater from seeping into the Seine.

Did people poop in the Seine?

Parisians promised to ‘take a sh*t’ in the river ahead of Olympics to protest the fortune that French authorities spent on the clean up.

A ‘sh*t flashmob’ was organised in the river on the day that president Emmanuel Macron and mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, were due to take a swim in it to prove that their efforts are not in vain.

This was due to happen on June 23, but the mayor did not take a dip until almost a month later.

There were no reports at the time of arrests of people fulfilling their promise in the river.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.