Olympics: Revival (Almost) of River Seine

UNESCO’s World Heritage site the Seine River is almost 481 miles long and runs through the heart of Paris. It has served as an identity symbol for French people for centuries. This river is an important medium for trading across the world, The port of Le Havre at Seine is France’s largest international shipping port. Because of the crucial role of the Seine in transportation, it has attracted colonization from the Neolithic era. 

Seine is one of the most romanticized rivers in the world as referred to by Elaine Sciolino, author and New York Times journalist. Seine banks are adorned by numerous architectural wonders which include Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, Orsay Museum and Louvre Museum. The 1900 Summer Olympics were hosted in Paris, with the Seine serving as the venue for the swimming event. 

But even Seine’s historical, cultural and aesthetic aspects failed to protect it from the wrath of industrialization. Seine has been taking human waste and chemical waste from industries since the time of French Industrialization. Persistent exploitation caused the water’s quality to drop so only bacterial species could live there. The river water had worse oxygen levels, peaking biological oxygen demand and high ammonia levels. The government was compelled to outlaw swimming in Siene in 1923 due to the river's deteriorating state. 

By the 1970s, the river was taking almost 60% of Paris’s wastewater drastically affecting the fish diversity reducing it to just three species. In the 1990s, then mayor of France Jacques Chirac promised to revive the Seine in the next three years, but he could not keep his word. 

The revamping project started in the year 2015, the main focus points of this project were to manage sewage waste and treatment plants and keep contaminants at bay during heavy rainfall. Multiple households and industries were connected to the main line sewer system, this step showed significant improvement in the quality of water. In the summer of the year 2023, the water quality test declared the Seine’s water swimmable for seven out of every ten days. The biological oxygen demand of the river reduced significantly and the diversity of fish species increased from three species to a significant number of 32 species.  

The most crucial step of this project was tackling the sewage dump during the heavy rainfall. This problem arises because of the traditional sewage system in the city, which combines the flow of sewage waste and stormwater through the same passages. Although the destination of these sewer lines is the treatment plants located outside of the city, heavy rainfall makes this system vulnerable. Therefore, during rainfalls, the water is redirected to the seine river to prevent backing off into the streets and residential areas. 

This impediment was resolved by creating a giant underground storage tank The Austerlitz Basin for storing combined water during heavy rainfall. This tank is Located in Southeastern Paris and can store water equivalent to almost 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, which is more than 10 million gallons of water. This enormous structure holds water from contaminating the river and releases it slowly for treatment. This basin was inaugurated in May 2024. The cost spent on this project was almost $1.5 billion, making it the costliest project taken by Paris for hosting the Summer Olympics. 

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, was instrumental in the entire renovation effort. The Seine River is important to Parisians for reasons other than the Olympics, yet they moved quickly to revitalize it in time for 2024. In preparation for hosting multiple open-water swimming competitions during the 2024 Summer Olympics, the Seine was revitalized. 

This was not the first time when a city got cleaner before the advent of the Olympics. For hosting the Olympics in 2008, Beijing made significant improvements in its air quality. By removing heavy metals and a wide range of organic elements, London transformed its once-contaminated land into The Olympic Park to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics saw a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 800,000 tons since there were no spectators present.

Author: Shikha Mishra Editor: Sanyam Jain

Illustrator: Bristi Paul

Reviewer: Aviral Srivastava

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