the Seine still too polluted one month before opening

The Seine was still polluted one month before the opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, according to the analysis reports published Friday June 28 by the Paris town hall for the week of June 16 to 23, beyond the standards required for that the Olympic events take place there. “Water quality remains degraded due to an unfavorable hydrological context: rain, high flow, low sunshine, temperatures below seasonal norms and pollution from upstream”said the town hall. “We expect things to improve this week given the weather.”, commented for its part the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region to AFP. The regional prefect Marc Guillaume had warned that the river would not be swimmable at the beginning of July due to the flow of the river.

The concentration of the two faecal bacteria on which the regulations for authorising bathing are based showed sharply higher values ​​compared to the first two weeks of June, with very high peaks between 18 and 20 June. The flow of the river, which has increased sharply over the past month, was up to six times greater than usual, it was 666 cubic metres per second on Sunday 23 June, whereas it is normally 100 to 150 cubic metres at this time. It is because of this excessive flow that the rehearsal of the opening ceremony scheduled for Monday was postponed.

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Doubts

These poor results, due to the weather, have reinforced doubts about the proper holding of the Olympic events in the river (triathlon and open water swimming) but also about the opening ceremony, which also depends on a correct flow of the river. In the event of heavy rainfall, untreated water – a mixture of rain and waste water – can be discharged into the river, a phenomenon that retention structures inaugurated just before the Games are intended to prevent. Plan B consists of postponing the events by a few days, but not changing the venue.