Nearly a hundred days before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (JO), the NGO Surfrider Foundation sounded the alarm on Monday April 8 about the state of the waters of the Seine – where several events are to be held –, which she estimates “alarming” after having carried out a six-month sampling campaign, outside the period planned for swimming. Out of fourteen measurements that the association carried out between the end of September 2023 and the end of March 2024 under the Alexandre-III and Alma bridges, sites of future triathlon and open water swimming events, thirteen were revealed “above, even very much above” recommended thresholds.
With regard to the 2006 European “swimming” directive and the scales of the swimming and triathlon federations, the concentrations of Escherichia coli and enterococci, bacteria indicative of fecal contamination, must not exceed, respectively, 1,000 colony-forming units ( CFU) and 400 CFU per 100 milliliters (ml). Beyond that, the water is considered unsuitable for swimming.
Analyzes carried out by Surfrider Foundation show E. coli concentrations regularly higher than 2,000 CFU/100 ml (the maximum was 7,250, under the Alma bridge, on February 7) and 500 CFU/100 ml for enterococci (the maximum was 1,190 on the same date). Faced with these results “alarming”the NGO expresses its “growing concerns about the water quality of the Seine” and point them “risks” for athletes, and beyond for Ile-de-France residents, “to evolve in contaminated water”.
“There was never any question of opening swimming in the Seine all year round”responded on Franceinfo the prefect of the region, Marc Guillaume, for whom “it does not make sense to go and take samples at the moment”.
“High sunshine, low precipitation, long daylight hours, low river flow” are the weather factors “unattainable in winter” which on the contrary allow swimming in the Seine in summer, also affirmed, in a reaction to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Pierre Rabadan, the deputy for the Olympics and the Seine of the Paris City Hall.
If the water is unclean, tests may be “postponed”
However, other analyzes sent to AFP at the end of 2023 by the Town Hall had already shown that between June and September 2023 none of the fourteen Parisian water sampling points had reached a sufficient level of quality at with regard to European directives. And, in August 2023, the dress rehearsal for several Olympic events had to be canceled due to water quality thresholds that were clearly exceeded.
Town hall and prefecture, at the head of the steering committee for the plan into which the State and communities have injected 1.4 billion euros to make the river swimmable, recall that five major works should ensure a clean Seine. summer will be operational “in a few weeks”.
The triathlon events (July 30 and 31, August 5) and open water swimming, now called marathon swimming (August 8 and 9), remain threatened by the possibility of heavy precipitation, which would degrade the water of the Seine, the discharge into its bed of wastewater mixed with rainwater. In case of “big storm” Or “very heavy rain” making it unfit, “contingency days may be used” to postpone the tests “one or two days”recalled Marc Guillaume.
With the efforts made, “the water quality of the Seine will be there for the Olympics”assured the region’s prefecture in a press release.