One month before the Paris Olympics, the Seine River is still seriously polluted

The Seine is still too polluted to swim in. The results, based on an analysis carried out between June 16 and 23, were published by the French capital’s city council on Friday, a month before the start of the Olympic Games.

The city council said: “Water quality continues to deteriorate due to unfavourable hydrological conditions: rainfall, high flows, low sunshine, lower than usual temperatures at this time, and pollution upstream.”

“We hope that the situation will improve this week, taking into account the weather forecast,” the Paris regional government told AFP.

Prefect Marc Guillaume has already warned that bathing will not be allowed in early July due to high river flows. For the month, flows at this time were six times higher than usual, reaching a peak of 666 cubic metres per second on Sunday, July 23, while normal flows for this period were between 100 and 150 cubic metres.

As a result, the opening ceremony rehearsal originally scheduled for Monday had to be postponed.

Compared with the first two weeks of June, concentrations of two fecal bacteria that are allowed in bathing regulations increased dramatically, reaching very high peaks between June 18 and 20.

The poor results were largely due to adverse weather conditions, which heightened doubts that the triathlon and open water swimming events could go ahead as planned in the river.

Even the inauguration ceremony was in jeopardy, with a six-kilometer march along the river; Due to the large water flow.

In the event of heavy rainfall, untreated water (a mixture of rainwater and wastewater) could end up in the river, and the interception project launched before the Olympics is intended to prevent this from happening.

Plan B involves postponing the test for a few days, but without changing the scenario.