The Seine was still too polluted a month before the opening of the Paris Olympic Games. Beyond the standards required for the events to take place there, according to the analysis reports for last week but published this Friday, June 28 by the municipality. “The quality of the water remains degraded due to an unfavorable hydrological context: rain, high flow, low sunshine, temperatures below seasonal standards and pollution coming from upstream,” Paris City Hall announced.
“We expect things to improve this week given the weather,” the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region told 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.
Flow too strong
The flow of the river, which has increased sharply over the past month, was up to six times higher than usual: 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.
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 intense precipitation, untreated water – a mixture of rain and wastewater – can be released into the river, a phenomenon that retention works inaugurated just before the Games are intended to prevent. Plan B consists of postponing the tests for a few days, but not changing location.