In turn “the conscience of Paris” and “the great cavern of evil” for Victor Hugo, the sewers of Paris first appeared as the materialization of the city’s underworld, before embodying its modernity, even if it meant forgetting the heroes who work there, at the risk of their lives.
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While in ancient times, Rome had a long drainage channel – the Cloaca Maxima – whose remains stretched over more than 800 metres, Lutetia was a pale shadow. To date, archaeologists have only found a single conduit connecting the ancient baths of Cluny to the Seine. After the end of the Gallo-Roman period, it was not until the 14th century that the first covered sewer appeared. At the beginning of the 19th century, the entire covered network was approximately 25 km long. Old and poorly mapped, it did not facilitate human intervention.
Its contents are dumped into the Seine and the toilets are not connected to it. We make do with watertight and uniform cesspools, mandatory in every building since 1809, which drainers treat during the night. Their barrels filled with fecal matter, which they spread in the “roads” of Monfaucon, between Belleville and La Villette, are the olfactory terror of the inhabitants. Decomposed in the open air, the excrement turns into powder which comes to seed the fields of the neighborhood. The residue returns to the sewers, then to the Seine.
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Many prefer to throw the contents of their chamber pots out the window. The sewers, which are supposed to collect rainwater, are thus loaded with all sorts of filth that they are not supposed to accommodate, leaving Parisians in terror of flooding. In the words of Prefect Rambuteau, the capital exhales “ this smell of rotten cabbages, characteristic by which the Parisian returning from a trip recognizes his Paris “In this growing city – the population doubled during the early 19th century – the open sewer remained the norm, with a whole range of smells that marked the activities of the neighborhood it crossed.
Haussmann’s Great Sewer: A Spectacular but Unfinished Development
The great cholera epidemic of 1832, which was not yet known to be spread by the presence of faecal matter in drinking water, triggered a veritable hygiene frenzy. It was then believed that diseases were transmitted by pestilential odours. Nevertheless, treating the symptom would eventually separate inhabitants from their cesspools and therefore from the sources of many diseases. Water, air, shade “, promised Prefect Rambuteau. The lateral gutters soon replaced the channel in the center of the roadway. During the July Monarchy, which ended in 1848, 80 km of sewers were created.
Everything accelerated with the Second Republic, which closed the roads of Monfaucon and pushed the evacuation into the Bondy forest. It also had a second large collector sewer built on the right bank, parallel to the Seine, which allowed the contents of the canals that connected to it downstream from the Place de la Concorde to be discharged. With the Second Empire, Baron Haussmann took up the old dream of giving Paris sewers worthy of ancient Rome. The engineer Belgrand, head of the water and sewer department, was the project manager. When he died in 1878, the sewers of Paris now stretched over more than 600 km. These galleries multiplied at a rate twice as fast as the streets.
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Although the new network now officially accommodated household wastewater, the question of the sewer system was pushed back by Haussmann, who refused to follow the London example. He barely tolerated the excrement being evacuated by separator pipes, to then be transported to the dumps by boat. The pride of the modern city, the sewers had to remain open to visitors. Nadar, the great portraitist of Baudelaire and Hugo, photographed them with passion. However, during the summer of 1880, Paris was invaded by an intolerable odor. The debate was reopened, the sewer system was once again rejected, including by Pasteur, who was one of the scientists charged with deciding on the future of Parisian hygiene.
A handful of forgotten heroes
Paris then found itself faced with the paradox of having the most majestic sewer system of the European capitals, but still unsuited to the needs of its inhabitants. It was up to the prefect Poubelle in 1894 to decide on the all-sewer system, a reform that would take a decade to implement due to the reluctance of building owners. In 1911, the network exceeded 1,200 km. Its size has more than doubled today, integrating many recent modernizations. However, a large part of the equipment and the spirit of the Parisian sewers still bear the mark of Haussmann’s creations.
There are fewer than 300 professional sewer workers in Paris today. Salaries are low, as is life expectancy, although there is a lack of studies to measure it, partly because of their small number and partly because of a lack of willpower. However, there is talk of very high excess mortality, due to repeated exposure to toxic substances – which has not been one of the risk factors to be declared by employers since 2017 –, infections from cuts, bites or immersion in polluted water, but also suicides.
Although their retirement was pushed back from 50 to 52 in 2010, then from 52 to 54 by the latest reform against which they were at the forefront of the mobilization, they still benefit from a special regime that their colleagues in Marseille do not know, for example (around a hundred private sector sewer workers, who retire at 64). “Shadow agents”, the sewer workers remain, unlike their road colleges, barely visible to residents. However, they know, through their waste, the hidden part of their stories and their unspoken secrets.
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